


Game Over - Continue

by nambnb



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Bad Ending, Bad Ending Turned Good, Bodyswap, Death, Fluff, Harassment, M/M, Mutilation, Physical Disability, Robot Sex, Robots, Romance, Scrap (DRAMAtical Murder)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-08 00:17:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 41,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4283454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nambnb/pseuds/nambnb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clear reverts back to his old self with Sei's help and regrets what he did to Aoba deeply. The one problem left is the condition of Aoba's body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> spoiler alert: contains spoilers for Clear's route in general and his bad ending, including the reconnect version; also spoiler's for Ren's route concerning background info on Sei and Aoba

Sei had always been under Toue's care since the day he was born as a designer baby - his birth itself had been an experiment already. Being connected to all sorts of data gathering machines all day long and undergoing countless kinds of experiments was Sei's daily life. Sei's ability to enter and control people's minds via Scrap by the use of his eyes, or rather the light emitted by them, had helped Toue in many ways already. It went as far as having first half and then all of Midorijima island under his control. Sei couldn't determine if Toue's way of doing things was right or wrong since he believed it was the decision of the individual to decide fo themselves if what they considered doing was correct or not. The problem with Toue's influence was that it took away the ability to decide anything for yourself since it put you under the mercy of another human being.

By the time Toue had planned to take over all of Midorijima, meaning acting even outside of his personal playground called Platinum Jail, Sei had been hesitant to help Toue for the first time in his life. It wasn't like he could rebel much on his own though. His body had been weakened over the years as a human guinea pig and his soul had literally faded away under the inhuman treatment Sei had suffered from for over twenty years by now.  
But some years ago Sei had found his twin brother again from whom he had been separated right after birth. Aoba was free in mind and body, a state Sei had longed for on his own, having and created countless selves in his yearning attempt to break free and had them scattered all over the various networks of Midorijima. One day Aoba had decided to take an Allmate home and his recognition chip went online as he had registered his new artificial network tool, or rather his pet partner in the form of a dark blue furred Pomeranian dog. It was then that Sei had found out about his brother's whereabouts. He had always felt his brother's life presence somehow in the distance, but it was the frist time he was able to grasp Aoba's signs of life so strongly. Aoba had immersed himself in the virtual battle game 'Rhyme' for a certain amount of time and whenever he had played in an official match, Sei had been able to watch him during the eyes of Usui, the entity overseeing the matches, which carried a part of Sei's consciousness within itself. Aoba had been violent but strong then, even going as far as to use his own version of Scrap to mercilessly crush his opponent's mind if he felt like it. His soul had felt raw and untameable to Sei, but also irritated and lonely. And Sei had noticed another thing: the Allmate avatar Aoba was using in Rhyme gave off the same feeling as Aoba's soul. He must have been part of Aoba in a similar way hat Usui was part of Sei. The reason was unknown to Sei, but the fact remained. As time passed Aoba stopped doing Rhyme and at the same time his soul became more gentle, but Sei could feel his mind only very far away, only able to know what Aoba was doing if he used electronic devices like Aoba's coil or something else emitting radio waves that Sei's consciousness could follow. Sei knew it was kind of rude to stalk Aoba in a way, but it gave him a feeling of joy to be connected to his twin brother again, even if just virtually. And it was not like he could do this 24/7 anyway. His mind would not last that long. Only when he was able to escape from the strain of the experiments being done to his body could he focus enough to filter out Aoba's life signs among the countless streams of information continuously swirling through Sei's mind.

And then Toue's meddling began to affect even Aoba's life. Toue planned to overtake all of Midorijima, which would include the Old Resident District Aoba lived in, too. Sei didn't want to be responsible for destroying Aoba's life, as well. It was the first time that he was willing to go against Toue's wishes.

Sei wanted to be destroyed by Aoba's power. It was the only way for him to grasp freedom away from Toue's clutches and he felt that his weakened body wouldn't last much longer anyway. Plus with him gone the great commemorative event Toue had planned out to take over Midorijima with would not work as well since the main power behind it lay in Sei's eyes. Thus Sei had sent hidden messages to Aoba to come and see him. When Aoba's adoptive grandmother, a former researcher of Toue's team who had been involved in Aoba's and Sei's creation, was supposed to be kidnapped to prolong Sei's life by the use of her skills, Sei had tried to intervene, to warn Aoba and to guide him towards the place she was held at so he could rescue her. Aoba had been successful then and he learnt what Toue was about to do to the residents of the Old Resident District, too. He even had decided to stop him - Sei was thrilled. That would mean there was a chance Aoba would meet with Sei, too, if he entered Oval Tower where Toue resided.  
So Sei continued to guide Aoba, even going as far as to open up Platinum Jail and Oval Tower for him so Aoba could enter without much problems. But standing between Sei and Aoba's reunion was still the man himself. Toue had not been defeated yet, going up against Aoba with two androids capable of producing mind-controlling Dye Music and threatening Aoba with it. To Sei's surprise another android with the same face but a completely different set of mind had accompanied Aoba to Platinum Jail. Watching the scene by entering the footage of the security cameras of Oval Tower, Sei saw the android fight for Aoba and even going as far as to harm himself to be able top stand up against his own kind and his creator. Aoba called him 'Clear' and Sei was amazed by his determination to protect him, to do everything for him, even on the verge of dying - or rather breaking beyond repair. But after putting up an heroic fight against his brothers at first, Clear still had failed to overcome his stronger alpha series counterparts in the end, so Toue got hold of both of them after all.

It was the end of Sei's hope and his resistance died down together with it.

Time passed with Sei being unable to see Aoba, but his grandmother Tae had been assigned as Sei's prior caretaker, her task being to ensure Sei's life would continue even if it was only for just a little while longer. She said she had heard Aoba was a subject of Toue's experiments now, too, and that she was forbidden to see him or to even read the details of the experiments. Sei got lethargic at the news even though he was sure that this was what would have awaited Aoba if he didn't manage to overthrow Toue - Sei had just been so sure he could do it. And now his little brother was in Toue's clutches as well and it all felt like it was Sei's fault in the first place, since he practically lured him into the lion's den by interfering with Aoba's life.  
Still, one day Sei gathered enough courage to try and find out about the whereabouts of his little brother inside of Oval Tower. He just wanted to see him no matter what the circumstances currently were, even if he would hate him now. The data about Aoba was heavily secured, but no real problem for Sei to decode.

Suddenly a loud scream roared through the entire Oval Tower, shaking it to its very core as it echoed through its walls. It was an indescribable sound like the tower's main system itself wanted to scream from the top of its imaginary lungs. The rooms became filled with buzzing and beeping sounds and static made every hair of the people inside of Oval Tower stand on end. Errors popped up on every monitor's screen, a few sparks flew form the tower's main boards and alarm bells shrilled from every machine used in the building.

The source of all of it was Sei.

He sat upright on on his bed, gripping the bedsheets so strongly that his white bones shone through his pale skin. His normally barely audible voice was constrained with a fury completely unbecoming for Sei and it was more like his feelings simply boiled over and resonated outside of his body than that he screamed for real. It was a sensation like feeling waves hitting you instead of hearing a sound. His face was overflown by tears and he heaved hard with nothing coming out of his stomach besides gastric juices. A swarm of medical personnel immediately rushed into his room and checked on Sei's vitals. The first thing he got was a sedative to calm him down. The doctors who had hurried to his room included Tae, who was the only person to rub Sei's back and tried to soothe him with calming words. Slowly Sei's grip on his bedsheets got weaker as the sedative kicked in and the unhearable loudness surrounding the tower died down with it. The medical staff left the room when Sei's organism was forced to calm down and his vitals went back to normal - all aside from Tae, who stayed with the young man who still carried a more than terrified look on his face.  
Tae had been placed under Toue's control like most of Midorijima's residents since the commemorative event of Platinum Jail had taken place. But she was not directly controlled by Toue's brain washing, since she needed to be sane to work on Sei. She had lost most of her will to fight though, since Toue had gotten hold of Aoba. She only helped out with Sei since she saw him as her responsibility now, because he was someone born from her research and suffering because of it without being at fault for it. Seeing Sei's condition worried her greatly.

 

There was exactly one reason Sei had acted so beside himself: He had read Aoba's medical file and found out that his brother had been mutilated by the one machine that was supposed to take care of him. Following the data in the files, Aoba had been robbed of his eyes, his voice, even his limbs; leaving him a helpless cripple. His voice must have been Toue's fault, Sei was sure of that. Taking away what triggered Aoba's Scrap ability was Toue's way to say he didn't need the rest of Aoba anymore after experimenting on him for the longest time. It was bad enough to take away somebody's freedom of speech. But his eyes, arms and legs, too?  
Why?  
Why were they gone, as well?  
There was no experiment linked to it and the executor listed in the files was R-2E-054, an android's serial number similar to that of the Alpha series, probably an older model, and the only other android type currently in use at Oval Tower was the one Aoba had called "Clear".  
Clear, the one that had entered Oval Tower together with Aoba on that day, who had been so persistent to protect him then.  
Why had he done something like this to Aoba now?

Before Sei could even do it consciously, one of his many scattered net selves had already searched the tower's data system for information about Clear and Sei was informed that Clear had been a unit that was labeled as defective years ago and supposed to be destroyed. There was no log posted for years to follow up on his situation, but some time ago his file had been updated to state that after being thrown away, the android had been saved by a garbage worker and had been reprogrammed by the man as well. The file read as follows:  
"The unit R-2E-054 appears to have a set of emotions closer to that of a human being now than at its default settings on its production date, even exceeding the human impersonation abilities of the later alpha series. It's asking itself questions about its raison d'être and has described its relationship with the test subject Aoba as him being the android's master and R-2E-054 as 'being in love with Aoba-san'. After the unit was set back to its default settings it no longer questioned it's reason to exist and acknowledged T. Toue as its master, but the A. I. still rated the feelings towards the aforementioned human test subject as 'love'. It stated that it failed to describe the word's meaning, but was sure it was the right word to use. The unit was assigned as a personal protector of the subject Aoba on date xx/xx/xxxx. - Update on the status of R-2E-054: After the experiments on test subject Aoba were completed, R-2E-054 requested to be reinstated as his personal caretaker. Request has been granted and test subject Aoba was handed over to the unit on date xx/xx/xxxx."

Did this file mean that something was wrong with Clear's head now?  
He had been able to feel a complex emotion like love for Aoba and now he didn't even know what the word meant anymore?  
Was this the reason he had gone as far as scarring Aoba for life?  
The mental image of his brother having neither arms, legs nor eyes anymore turned Sei's stomach anew and he slapped a hand in front of his mouth as to not to gag again.

Whatever the reason for Clear's actions had been, Sei was very sure "love" was very far from it, since love shouldn't mean to want to harm your partner, much less to the point of dehumanizing him in any way.

Sei still shivered from the terrible news he had received and Tae tried to calm him down by holding his head and rocking him gently in her arms while whispering soothing words into his ears. Sei cried even harder when the thought of telling Aoba's gentle adoptive grandmother about what he had found out. He didn't want to do it at first, but he couldn't keep quiet about it for two reasons: For one, as Aoba's family member, Tae had a right to know what had happened to her grandson and secondly Sei had the feeling that he might go crazy, if he tried to deal with this alone.

"Tae-san? I... I found out what happened to Aoba."

Tae stopped moving instantly and a worried breath escaped the old woman's lips before she let go of Sei, took a seat next to him and told him: "I'm listening."

Sei sniffed, bit his lips and tried to speak, but the tears welled up in his eyes again and he choked.

"Is he dead?"  
Tae spoke in a firm tone, seemingly prepared for the worst.

"No, but...", Sei managed to swallow down his tears with difficulty, "Seeing him in the state he is in now... that might have been for the better."

Tae's eyes widened but then she continued to guess.  
"Is he comatose?"

Sei shook his head.  
"No, but he cannot move, never again, and he can't speak. He can't even see..."

Sei still hesitated to tell Tae what exactly had happened to Aoba, since he feared that the poor woman might have a heart attack if he flat out told her the truth.

"Can't move, can't see, can't speak... but not in a comatose state."  
Tae repeated the information given to her with a dry, cracking voice.  
"It sounds like he's trapped inside of his own body like an invalid."

Tears welled up in Sei's eyes again and he roughly wiped at them with the hem of his sleeve while pulling his knees up to this chin and hiding his face behind them before he nodded with a sniff. Tae slapped a hand in front of her mouth and gasped "Oh my God" then Sei heard her whimper. The sound was so unbecoming for this spritely old lady it nearly broke Sei's heart and he reached out for her shivering hands with his own.

"The documents state that the one responsible for it was someone named Clear. Do you happen to know him, Tae-san?"

"Clear?", Tae wrecked her brain over whom she had known with that name, "...Clear... Clear! The man with the gas mask on his face!"

"A gas mask?" Remembering the pictures of Clear attached to his file and the video broadcast from Toue's room plus the fact that Clear looked almost exactly like an Alpha, save for the two little moles below his lips, Sei couldn't associate Clear with a gas mask. He hadn't worn one when he had accompanied Aoba on the day they had arrived at Oval Tower, but Tae seemed very sure of that fact.

"Yes, it was quite memorable, he wouldn't even take it off when eating something. But aside from that oddity he seemed like a rather cheery and good natured young man. I had no occasion to speak with him in private, though. And you say he is responsible for Aoba's... current state? It seems so unlikely."  
Tae furrowed her brows while recalling Clear's behavior in her mind.

"I am sure, Tae-san", Sei stated, "I hoped you would know him more, but I guess he is able to act human convincingly enough."

Sei's comment made Tae sit up.  
"What do you mean by 'act human'?"

"He is a machine." Tae blinked once, dumbfounded for the moment and Sei continued, "He is an android similar to the Alphas. You know, Toue's personnel guards? The men in white. They sometimes wear white masks, too."

"Ah yes, I've seen them.", Tae nodded, "The ones able to produce Dye Music."

"Exactly.", Sei confirmed, but Tae wanted to make sure, seemingly still in disbelief.

"And Aoba's friend... Clear... He is one of them, you say?"

"He was an earlier model that was produced years ago and classified as defective, so Toue wanted to get rid of him. But somebody found him, reprogrammed him and some time later he became friends with Aoba somehow.", Sei tried to give Tae a summary of the report he had read.

"But why would he harm Aoba now? I don't think Aoba is the type to choose his friends that poorly. At least the few that I know of don't seem like they are bad people at their core." Tae sighed and folded her hands together, entwining her fingers and seemed lost in thought.

"I wondered about that, too. The files I found about him state that he was set back to default after Toue got hold of him and now he is acting inhuman towards Aoba." Sei grabbed at his sheets and gritted his teeth, pressing his lips into a thin line. The image of Aoba having no limbs anymore popped up in Sei's head again and he swallowed hard.

"Does that mean Clear's not responsible for doing those things to Aoba?", Tae asked with a faint tinge of hope colouring her question. "Was it part of one of Toue's experiments maybe? He cannot go against any of Toue's commands after all."

Sei shook his head, not being able to look the old woman in the eye.  
"There is no hint in the documents stating that, so I assume he acted on his own free will."

Tae was surprised beyond belief and only stared at Sei with a bewildered look on her face. Sei gave her a sympathetic half-smile.  
"I don't know why he did it, but I intend to find that out. I want to speak to Clear myself. I want to understand what made him hurt Aoba and on that level even. I don't think I could forgive him even if I knew, but I simply have to know."

"I understand.", Tae endorsed him, having found her voice again, and Sei was sure she had the same determination to seek that answer. But for Sei there was something else that had crossed his mind. He wanted to set matters right again. He wanted Aoba to be happy and he wanted to find out if this android named Clear, who claimed to love his little brother, deserved to continue being by Aoba's side. He wanted to ascertain if that passionate and heroic picture Clear had given off when he had tried to protect Aoba from Toue and his robotic brothers with his own life on the line had been fake or real. And then Sei would decide if he was going to allow Clear to help with an idea that might pose a solution for Aoba's ailment and help Sei at the same time. He couldn't just sit there and do nothing any longer. It was enough. He had not given up entirely in believing in a good ending.

"If you want to talk to Clear I think I can arrange that", Tae's words tore Sei away from his train of thoughts and after needing some time to understand what he was told, he shook his head with a smile.  
"I don't need you to do that, Tae-san. He's a machine connected to Oval Tower's network, so I can just command him over here if I want to see him." Sei's face turned serious then. "I need you for something else, though. Do you know a researcher or engineer who is good with robotics? Somebody who can repair and reprogram an android if necessary."

Tae's eyes went wide.  
"You want to set back Clear to the state he was in before Toue got hold of him?"

"Yes." Sei was determined to do so. "I cannot forgive Clear for what he has done to Aoba, no matter the reason he might have had, but I want him to atone for what he did. Even so, his current settings probably won't allow for that to happen, at least not if he's thinking in the same ruthless patterns like the Alphas do."

Tae was surprised to hear something like that out of Sei's mouth. He had spoken in an unusually harsh tone, too.  
"The way you said that so determinedly... It sounds like you want to take vengeance on him, Sei."

"I do.", Sei's answered bluntly before even having to think about it, "I never felt like this before. But when I think about what he did to Aoba... I kind of want to make him suffer. It's a feeling that's completely new to me. I can't explain it. It's curious."

"No, you don't need to explain, I can relate to it.", Tae agreed with Sei's feelings, "As a person who loves Aoba, I know exactly how you feel."  
A heavy sigh escaped her nose and they kept silent for a while. Tae stared at the hands folded in her lap while thinking. When she rose from her seat she said: "I think I know the right man for the job. Plus, he dislikes Toue es much as I do, so I don't think he'll betray us. I'll contact him and tell him what you want him to do."

"Thank you, Tae-san."

"We will need a room where we can set everything up, though. Preferably an unsupervised one.", Tae added to their brain storming, but Sei only smiled back at her.

"We can use mine, it's no problem for me to trick the supervision in here. Don't worry about those details, Tae-san. I'll get Clear, you get the mechanic and then we'll see." Tae nodded once and with their plan in mind they parted ways for the day.


	2. Chapter 2

A few days later it was possible to translate Sei's and Tae's scheme into action since Toue was absent from Oval Tower for a change, leaving Sei's room guarded only by the easily to manipulate surveillance cameras. And Clear... got mail. Or to be more precise it felt like the sudden order to visit Sei was directly implanted into Clear's mind like a thought would have been.

"Eh?"  
The white haired android had just joined Aoba, cuddling him from behind on the bed in his white cell-like room. He was deep-kissing him, entwining their tongues and eagerly waiting for Aoba to respond in another way than just to shiver in fear, when he was interrupted by Sei's message and parted with Aoba's lips again.  
"This is rather odd, but well..."

Sei was the next high-ranked person after his master Toue, so Clear guessed he should just follow his order. He honestly wasn't sure about it due to the unusual way the call for him had been made, but he obeyed nonetheless and climbed away from behind his beloved toy. Aoba seemed to look at him in a curious way, judging from his slightly opened mouth and the way he pricked up his ears. Not that a normal person would have noticed these kind of things, but without eyesight and the black blindfold over the region where his eye sockets were, it was hard to tell if Aoba was intending to 'look' at anything in particular. Clear noticed it of course and gently leaned Aoba back against a thick cushion at the bed's headboard after having risen from the bed. He made sure Aoba was in a stable sitting position before carefully brushing his bangs aside to lightly kiss his forehead.  
"Don't worry, Aoba-san. I'll be back as soon as possible. I just received a message stating that I have to visit somebody on the upper floors."

Before he left Aoba's side he smiled at him and asked him whether he needed to use the bathroom, since he was unsure how long he would be gone. After a moment, Aoba lightly shook his head at the question and Clear turned on his heels to head for Sei's room. Aoba turned his head to where he guessed a window should be in his cell and listened intently in hope to hear some noise or even music wafting inside from the ever busy streets of Platinum Jail. He got lucky today and smirked barely noticeably at the rhythmic sounds reaching his ears. It would be easier to pass the time when Clear was not by his side when he could take in something other than the silent darkness constantly surrounding him.

 

After having passed countless floors of Oval Tower in the elevator, Clear finally arrived on the top floor and knocked on Sei's door.  
"It's Clear. You called for me?"  
"Come in."  
Sei's voice was barely audible from behind the door but Clear's hearing abilities were top-notch so he had no problem understanding him and entered Sei's room.

Having never been there, Clear took in his surroundings as he entered the room. Aside from the unmissable pile of plushies and gift boxes of all kinds and sizes in one half of the room, that gave the impression of a child's room rather than of that of an adult, there was a huge bed with a mint green curtain hanging above its head board on the other side of the room. Sei sat up in the bed, propped by two large cushions behind his back and with his hands folded together, smiling at the newcomer. To his left side stood Tae and a man unbeknownst to Clear, who wore the same white lab coat a lot of researchers of Toue's were equipped with.  
Clear had never seen Sei in the flesh before, only knowing of his importance as Toue's kind of adoptive son and his role as a tool for Toue's plans to dominate mankind. He studied Sei's pale features, recognized his dark hair and eyes and suddenly a weird sense of sparks flying through the air hit Clear and he came to a halt in midway between the door and Sei's bed.  
While he still wondered what had happened to him, he noticed the area surrounding him consisted of nothing but a blue sky tinged with yellow-grayish clouds with no bottom to be visible bellow his feet. Translucent gears, made of a material with a blueish shine that reminded of glass, hung in the air and a slightly broken song was hearable in the distance. Clear knew that song, he had made it up himself a long time ago, but he rarely sang it anymore. There was simply no reason to do so. Up here in his mind the song sounded kinda off and interrupted, like something blocked it from coming through perfectly. It would even hitch occasionally, giving off a sound like a broken record. Clear was sure he was inside of his own mind, smirking crookedly at the fact that he possessed something like a 'mind' or 'heart' like a human would. But maybe the Alphas had something like this as well - it was all fake anyway.

Suddenly Sei was standing in front of him, still smiling with his mouth but not with his eyes. Clear smiled back at him in the same manner.  
"I have a distinct feeling of a déjà-vu.", Clear began to speak, "Only last time there was Aoba-san inside of my head."  
"I see.", Sei responded unimpressed, not being sure if what he had witnessed on the surveillance cameras' video then was really Aoba using Scrap on Clear or him simply failing since Clear had no consciousness to use it on. But here Sei was, inside of an android's mind and it looked rather beautiful, if disturbed by something at the same time. Ignoring Clear waiting for Sei to tell him why he had scrapped him, the young man looked around and finally spotted two gears being stuck to each other with a glass-like lens embedded into one of them with the words "It's better to stop now." carved into it. Below it there lay shattered pieces of the same material with different letters. If Sei concentrated he could recognize the words "It's fine to rest." on the pieces. Sei furrowed his brows at the messages. Maybe that was the reason Clear hadn't won against his brothers when he had fought against them to try saving Aoba. Maybe those words imprinted on his mind had held him back to a certain degree and Clear simply hadn't been strong enough to defeat the Alphas when he so desperately tried to do so. It was just a theory, though. But Sei had the inner urge to do something about that message. He wouldn't do anything before speaking to Clear though, so he finally turned around again and faced the android's consciousness.

"Do you love my brother, Clear?"  
The question startled Clear but he answered with a humorless smile on his lips: "The person I love is Aoba-san. I have no knowledge of Aoba-san being Sei-san's brother."  
"I see.", Sei looked to the invisible ground, "He and I were originally one, but we were born as two individuals."  
"Sei-san is Aoba-san's twin brother then?", Clear asked without deeming the information interesting in any way. "Then it's no miracle that both of you can use Scrap I guess."  
"No, that's our natural ability.", Sei looked up to Clear and his smile faded. "You hurt my little brother, Clear. Why did you do that if you claim to love him?"  
"I would never hurt Aoba-san. The only thing I did to him was making him more like me.", Clear stated with an enraptured look on his face at the thought of Aoba's current state.  
Sei balled his hands into fists without realizing it and had difficulty un-cramping his jaw to open his gritted teeth again.  
"My brother is a living human being, not a machine like you that you can tamper with at your leisure."  
"Yes, and that's the pity precisely.", Clear pointed out, lifting his index finger with a new smile on his face, "But I have worked on a way to correct that. I only cut away what he didn't need anymore." Blinking once, Clear looked at a far away spot in space and continued to speak fondly. "Aoba-san is so much more beautiful the way he is now than he was before. He is unable do to anything without me, he's completely helpless, he needs me. He's just something holding life, a being equally dead and alive at the same time - something similar to me." 

Sei grew so furious after hearing that explanation that he had difficulty controlling his ability and holding down his emotions while being inside of Clear's mind. His anger caused a distortion in the space surrounding him and a few of the gears hanging in midair began to vibrate slightly. Sei's power was not supposed to bring destruction like Aoba's, it was more a way to create something instead. But it could also be used to enforce Sei's will on somebody else like he had done it with the members of Morphine. When Clear broke down to his knees with a sudden headache, Sei drew a deep breath to try calming down his emotions. He hadn't come here to arouse conflict between the two of them, but to find a solution, a new starting point for Clear. There was no use in him overpowering Clear or to make him more artificial by enforcing his will upon him like on a lifeless doll. The sheer fact that he lost his temper so easily when he was around Clear surprised Sei himself. Under normal circumstances, he was a calm and collected individual, but when it came to Aoba a strong sense of wanting to protect him arose inside of Sei and all the more in respect of Aoba's current condition.

Sei looked back to the gears stuck to each other with the word-lense inside one of them before he began to speak in a composed but determined way.  
"So you did what you have done to my brother for your own self-satisfaction. But no matter the reason you might have had to harm him, to modify his body - especially to the degree that you did it, doing something like that is clearly not a thing a person loving somebody else should do. If you love someone, you're not looking for that person's 'faults' but for how to make them happy. Nobody should ever be forced to change to please the one they love, especially not so drastically."  
Sei turned around on his heels and saw that Clear had gotten up from his knees again, albeit still holding his head. He seemed angry and his voice shook slightly as he spoke.

"So you doubt my feelings for Aoba-san?", Clear growled lowly, balling his hands into fists and then he shouted at Sei. "Those feeling might be as artificial as the body holding them, but they are the closest thing to a real emotion I have! I won't allow you to dismiss them as wrong! Loving Aoba-san is the only thing I'm a hundred percent sure of! I want to be with him forever and ever more! It was necessary to alter his body to ensure that! I don't ever want to part from Aoba-san! He's mine!"

Sei... smiled at him in a pitying way. His voice sounded warmly but sadly.  
"I see that there is real emotion behind those words, Clear. It's just your perspective that's wrong. I prefer the Clear that protected my brother before thinking about his own safety, his own life. The one that said that Aoba had taught him valuable lessons of life and who wanted to 'become a human' for Aoba's sake, not for Aoba to become something artificial for his own self-indulgence. I hope I can recreate that kind of self within you."

With those words Sei closed his eyes and concentrated. If those words he had read before were the reason Clear was at a standstill, they had to be gone, giving Clear a new freedom of choice. Meddling with another person's mind was a risky thing, though, and it was difficult to decide which parts belonged in there and which did not, or rather which of them were harmful. Furthermore Sei's power was not meant to destroy anything, so if he wanted something to be 'gone' he could only recreate it in a way it might have been in before. Therefore he decided to mend the lenses on the gears stuck to each other to a point before either of them had shattered and then even back to the state before the words on them had appeared, leaving them with a blank surface they must have had before any doubts were carved into them. Then Sei removed the rust between the gears and they began to shiver and started to move.  
Clear felt a sudden pain in his head so strong he thought he might break in two and fell to his knees while clutching at his head. He screamed in agony and the sky inside of his head became completely dark while silence swallowed up everything aside from himself and Sei, who stood there, watching Clear's suffering with indifference.

"Clear", his voice rung in Clear's ears like a dull bell, "think about Aoba. Think about what you truly liked about him before the two of you faced Toue."  
Clear wanted to do so but it was hard. "My memories are fuzzy. They began to fade after I was restored at Oval Tower."  
But Sei insisted: "Try to remember. We are inside of your heart, Clear, your deepest core. Me being able to enter here is proof enough that you possess something akin to a soul. And a soul won't forget those things even if the head might do so. Therefore remember Aoba."

Clear tried to concentrate even with the searing pain in his head like a knife had been run through his temple.

What did he like about Aoba?  
Why was he so fascinated with him?  
What attracted him to Aoba in the first place?

The darkness surrounding Clear's mind began to fill with mental images of Aoba. Memories of Aoba's smiling face, his confused face, his face questioning Clear's reasons to follow him. Clear heard Aoba's voice inside his head declaring that his face looked no different from a normal human being. A voice which had told him important things about life and death Clear had always wanted to know about. He loved Aoba's voice, he had heard it and acknowledged him as his master before he had acknowledged Toue. Before meeting him, Clear had heard Aoba's voice in the distance and he had come for him to be with him, to assist him in whatever way, to help him, to protect him, to be close to him. And then everything had fallen apart in that one moment where he couldn't muster enough strength to stand up against Toue and his brothers.

Sei had his hands folded behind his back and looked at the images being displayed around them with a real smile on his lips for the first time since meeting Clear. He was confident that Aoba meant enough to Clear to entrust his well-being to this person as soon as his mind was set straight again of Toue's meddling from the outside as well now, allowing him to act on his true feelings again. He bent down a little and spoke gently when he addressed Clear this time.

"Clear, look at me."  
His discussion partner had difficulty to do so with the pain still hammering in his head, but he still did as he was told and looked into Sei's eyes.  
"I'm going to recreate you. You shall look forward to being with Aoba again and treasure him like the important person he is to you without feeling the need to correct the things separating the two of you, since there are none at the bottom of your hearts."  
Clear's eyes lit up and a white light started to engulf his whole mind, swallowing him and Sei up in the process.

 

Clear woke up still standing in midway between the door of Sei's room and his bed. It looked like no time had passed at all, even though it felt to Clear like he had been asleep for a longe while. His lips quivered as he tried to speak and a very robotic voice came out of his mouth.  
"...I got... error messages all over my system. I'm going to shut down as per safety record. Please overhaul my system."  
That said he shut down indeed, tumbling to the ground as stiff as a statue and didn't move anymore.

Sei exhaled deeply and fell back on his cushions, sweat dripping from his forehead and his whole body feeling cold from damp clothes clinging to his body. Tae got a worried look on her face and nodded to her befriended researcher to tell him to get to work on Clear while she would tend to Sei.  
"I assume it did go well?"  
"Yes.", Sei's voice sounded faintly, "I believe as soon as his mind is set back on the right track from the outside as well he will be the same he was before."  
Tae wiped the sweat off Sei's forehead and took his pulse, sighing at the rate of Sei's heartbeat.  
"You overdid it. What would you have done if it hadn't worked at all? Why did you even think you could scrap him in the first place? He's a machine!"  
Sei huffed a short laugh. "I thought Aoba tried to do so once, so I wanted to try as well. He trusted Clear to be human enough for it to work so I had to see it for myself." He turned his head to Tae and smiled at her happily. "You'd be surprised how beautiful his heart was. It was distorted to a degree, but still very pretty. It sparkled a little and it felt very nice. It was very empty, though, but the sole fact that it was there gave me hope."

Tae looked over to her friend working at Clear and sighed.  
"I am surprised we were even able to find a backup-disc with Clear's former state of mind on it. I wouldn't have thought Toue to be the kind of man to keep something he'd deem faulty in the first place. I mean he wanted to get rid of Clear once already when he was labelled as defective."  
"I am not surprised by this.", Sei opposed her while studying Clear's seemingly sleeping face, "Toue is fond of everything he deems interesting or out of the norm so I was sure he would keep a file of Clear's old personality since he found the way he had changed fascinating. He sees everything as a giant game and likes to collect trophies, too. So I was quite sure there would be something left."


	3. Chapter 3

Time had passed with nothing but the sounds of the researcher working on Clear moving his hands on parts of Clear's hardware and occasionally cursing under his breath when something just wouldn't work the way he expected it to. Tae helped him in monitoring the data running down a supervisory screen that had popped up next to Clear's body and handed him tools he needed to work with.  
Sei had thought it would need less effort in setting back Clear's mind, like just transferring the data from the disc it was stored on into Clear's head, but the researcher had explained to him that Clear's system was full of errors besides the ones already created by his reset personality conflicting with his old memories. Using scrap on Clear now must have partly wrecked him from the inside with a few circuits short circuiting from his renewed change of mind. But the researcher had assured Sei that he would manage to get him back into a functioning state inside the time window until Toue would return. The only thing Sei could do now was to try to gather his strength for the next step he was going to undertake considering Aoba's situation. It might be impossible to do it all in one go now, so he tried to come up with a plan to make it work even if it meant operating right under Toue's nose.

A few hours passed but then the researcher finally put away his tools, ran a last test on Clear's functionality, closed up Clear's body to start him up again and stepped back. Sei was eagerly awaiting for the personality coming through this time and Tae stood next to him, unsure how to face Clear after all he had done to Aoba.

Clear opened his eyes slowly, blinking once and exhaling before staring at an unfixed point in the room. After a few moments, tears started to well up in his eyes and he spoke with a quivering voice.  
"...Are... those memories... correct?"

The researcher who had repaired Clear stopped cleaning his hands with a towel and spoke up.  
"I didn't touch your memories, since there were no errors after the emotional reload from the backup-disc. There were no damage reports either."

"I see... They are correct then.", Clear answered in a monotone voice and then added while tears started to roll down his face, "I am sorry to waist your effort, but can I self-destruct now?"

The researcher gave Tae a bewildered look, then tried to ask Sei what was going on, but the young man intervened already, speaking calmly.  
"Does it hurt when you think about what you did to Aoba?"

"Yes.", Clear answered with a cracking voice and Sei smiled at him.

"How much?"

"It's almost unbearable." Clear clutched at his shirt at the level where a human's heart would be and hung his head while the tears continued to tumble to the floor.

"Good." Sei's smile broadened.

Clear swallowed hard and asked again.  
"Can I destroy myself now, please?"

"No.", the tone in Sei's voice turned to serious and he gave Clear a commanding look, "You will have to face what you have done to my brother. I won't let you run away from your responsibility."

Clear threw himself to the floor, grabbing at his hair and shivering under his sobs.  
"But how shall I ever ask for Aoba-san's forgiveness for what I did to him? I can never undo what I have done!"

"Don't ask for forgiveness."  
Sei's answer was stern and Tae was surprised at how hard he could be against a person kneeling on the floor crying. But at the same time she was reminded that Clear had disfigured Aoba for life and that there was no turning back for him. She just kept silent because she couldn't manage to find the right words to voice her opinion on the matter yet. Sei continued to speak.  
"Asking for forgiveness is a selfish act of wanting to feel better yourself and won't help the person having the trouble."

Sei's words cut at Clear like knives and he sat back up, bringing himself into a kneeling position and looking down.  
"What should I do then?"

"The only thing you can do now is to atone for your sins by helping me save Aoba and care for him for the rest of your life."

"Eh?" Clear was speechless at the sudden turn of Sei's speech.  
Save Aoba?  
How?  
Saving Aoba clearly couldn't mean there was a way to restore his body, was there?

Seeing Clear's confusion, Sei relaxed the stern look on his face into his usual confident yet weak appearance and elaborated further.  
"I thought of a way for Aoba to get back what he has lost and to stop Toue at the same time."  
Stopping himself at that point in their conversation, he smiled at the researcher who had repaired Clear and told him to kindly leave the room now. Tae understood that whatever plan Sei was about to reveal would be a very dangerous endeavor, so she escorted her friend out of the room, thanking him for his efforts on the way out and assured him she would keep him up to date on the plan as soon as they had discussed it and that it might be better for him not to know too much at this point in time. Returning to Sei's bedside, Clear began to speak.

"By 'getting back what Aoba-san has lost' I guess you mean his... limbs, his eyes and his voice?", Clear bit his lip after having spoken about it, but then continued while looking up to Sei with a fearful look on his face, "You don't think to restore those parts by using your own body since you are twins, do you, Sei-san?"

Tae was surprised by Clear's train of thought and paled at the image, immediately looking at Sei, who still smiled, and snapped at him the next second.  
"You can't be serious! Aoba wouldn't want that! That would essentially mean to put you in the state Aoba is in now and there is no guarantee that a transplantation of body parts on that scale would even work! Even if there have been operations successfully reattaching limbs and recreations of voices, there is no way to restore eyesight yet! And it's impossible to know if it would even work! In the worst case scenario both of you will die, Sei!"  
She grabbed the young man's shoulders with shivering hands and looked him into the eye like to adjure Sei not to even think about that.  
"Promise me you won't go this far, Sei!"

Sei chuckled and put a hand on top of Tae's, smiling in a very solemn way.  
"Don't worry, I wouldn't do that. Although I cannot deny that the thought passed my mind. But it's too risky, the probability of it failing is too high, so I thought of something better."

He turned to look over his shoulder at Clear and said: "I won't give Aoba part of my body, but the whole thing."

"Heh?"

 

Clear walked down the stairs from the top floor rather than using the elevator to think about the things Sei had told him just yet. He was willing to give up his own body for his brother so that he could start his life anew. Neither Clear nor Tae had ever heard about a thing like swapping bodies among humans, but Sei had explained that he was sure it would work with him and Aoba since both of them had been one at the beginning and possessed the ability to split and pass their soul to others. Sei was more experienced in this field, having made countless copies of his souls and letting them roam the network surrounding Midorijima. One part of his soul was even fused with Usui, the judge of Rhyme and Toue's Allmate. As for Aoba the evidence of his soul being split lay in the fact that his Scrap ability had a mind of his own, a thing both Tae and Clear had witnessed already. But for the ability to pass his soul on to something out of his own body, Clear and Tae didn't have the slightest idea that Aoba had managed to do that, too. Sei had explained that Ren was proof of that, since his consciousness was part of Aoba's soul as well - a fact neither Clear nor Tae had known about and couldn't believe at first. Sei stated that he had only found out about that by watching Aoba play in Rhyme and feeling the same aura from him and Ren like they were one and the same, so he was confident that he was right in his assumption of Ren's origin.  
Tae had voiced her concerns then, that aside from the fact that Sei would still have to die for this to work, Sei's body was weak already and the question was if transferring Aoba's consciousness into of Sei's body would really be a thing worth trying. Sei had asked Tae then if his body was really in such a bad shape and Tae had mentioned that she didn't know how much longer she would be able to keep him going when he continued to use his ability for Toue's sake. Sei had smiled then and told her that this was exactly the point. Knowing his own body best he was sure that the important thing for his health to last was to not exceed the limits of his Scrap ability any further and for a soul to be strong enough to fill his body with the yearning to be alive again since Sei himself had given up on life quite some time ago already. Listening to this young man stating that he would welcome death rather than life had depressed Clear and Tae was at a loss for words, too, since she knew first hand that it was hard for Sei to keep going in his current state.

"No matter how much effort is poured into this body of mine it won't last much longer anymore, since my will is shattered beyond reach already. I just haven't given up completely yet since helping Toue reaching his goals never seemed like the wrong thing for me to do. And Tae-san was giving it her all to keep up my health, so I want to give her something back in return."  
Sei hat stated that with his usual smile and a determination lingering behind it that made it quite obvious that whatever arguments would be brought up against his idea, he was still willing to go through with it.  
"I have what Aoba has lost: a body that is intact. And Aoba has what I am lacking: a strong will, but it's buried inside of his soul now since too many bad things happened to him after Toue got hold of him. Experimenting on him until his spirit was broken made me loose belief in Toue and I'm not willing to help him any further now. But if I can help out Aoba by offering him my body, I am willing to demonstrate my last bit of strength to go against Toue and save Aoba. To be honest, it's more like Aoba is setting me free then vice versa. I want to be destroyed by him. It's my last wish."

After that Sei had explained that he needed to scrap Aoba, to collect the parts of his soul and hopefully raising his spirit again, since Aoba was mentally too weak at the moment. Only then would a transfer of souls between the two of them work for sure. Thus he had sent Clear back to Aoba and told him to bring him to Sei as soon as the opportunity would arise again. There was nothing they could do at the moment anymore since Toue would be back from his trip soon.

 

Clear finally arrived at the floor he kept Aoba on in his cell. Thinking about it now, that environment alone was a slap into Aoba's face and Clear hated himself for holding his loved one like a prisoner. Looking through the iron bars Clear could see Aoba sitting on the bed where he had left him a few hours ago. His head was slightly turned towards the window and he seemed to be lost in thought, not having reacted to Clear's footsteps like he usually would. Clear looked over Aoba's thin and worn out body and needed a moment to take in the reality of having cut off his limbs, destroyed his eyesight and removed his vocal cords, all but the last of it for his own satisfaction in the state of mind that he had at that time. His fingers cramped around the iron bars and a new crying fit took hold of him, making him sliding down the bars as his body shook under the tears and his voice only came out in sobs.  
Suddenly he heard a loud rustling of bed sheets inside the cell and saw Aoba had fallen over and tried to crawl towards him, heading for the end of the bed by trying to shove himself forward on his belly by the help of his shoulders.

"Aoba-san! Watch out!", Clear's voice rang out in fear of Aoba slipping off the bed and hitting the ground without the ability to catch himself and he ran inside the cell towards him and caught Aoba by his shoulders.  
"Please don't move any further, Aoba-san, it's dangerous!", his voice was shaking and his vision was blurred from him having cried, but he ignored all of this and looked at Aoba with a worried look on his face. Aoba stared back at him in wonder as far as Clear could interpret it and than something unusual happened when Aoba mouthed the words 'Did something happen?' in Clear's direction.

The sheer fact that Aoba was willing to 'speak' to him again after having been silent for most of the time since loosing his eyesight made Clear unbelievably happy and the fact that he couldn't speak anymore made him equally sad and he needed a moment to swallow down a new rush of tears before he answered him in a shaky voice.  
"Yes. A lot of things happened, Aoba-san. For one, I recognized that I was wrong in doing all those things to you. I am sorry... I'm so sorry, Aoba-san...! I don't even know where to begin to apologize... I love you. I love you so very much I don't know what to do."  
Clear crumbled down again and gave in to his tears, not knowing how to organize his thoughts into proper words yet. It was simply too much at once.

Aoba listened to him and kept silent for more reasons than having no voice anymore. Being robbed of the ability to see and to feel heat, cold and pain properly due to learnt insensitivity from the experiments and operations being done to him, yet being oversensitive to touching at the same time in fear of what might happen to him, Aoba had difficulty in observing his environment. But his remaining senses like hearing, smelling and tasting had heightened over the time and he was able to detect the changes in Clear's way of speaking to him with ease. Never mind the fact that Clear had just apologized for the things he had done to Aoba or that he was crying right now. There was this friendly undertone in his voice Aoba had dearly missed about him since being separated from Clear by the Alphas. Clear had never sounded and behaved the same again past collecting Aoba after Toue's experiments on him had been concluded. Clear had told him that he had been repaired after being damaged in the fight with his brothers, but Aoba didn't know that his personality had been set back to factory settings as well and could only conclude that they must have done something to him for Clear to act differently than before.  
But there it was, that was Clear's true voice and personality shining through the sobbing and him taking in hasty breaths. He was back. This was his Clear! Aoba couldn't believe it. He was so happy that tears began to form beneath his blindfold and made their way down his cheeks. Aoba wanted to embrace Clear right now, to hold him, but he couldn't - he had no arms to do so. Nevertheless he wanted to show Clear his affection and rubbed his cheek against Clear's shoulder in an effort to do so.

Clear noticed Aoba's gesture and his tears, being shocked and happy at the display of affection towards him at the same time. Aoba couldn't have forgiven him already, it was way too soon for that. But why was he cuddling up to him? Clear's heart felt heavy but his soul rejoiced at the fact that Aoba didn't shiver anymore in his arms and even approached him on his own for once while he held on to him. Clear cradled Aoba and the only thing he said was his beloved's name over and over again while rocking him gently in his arms.

After simply holding Aoba close for an unmeasured amount of time, Clear felt Aoba stirring in his arms and looked at him searchingly, unsure of what Aoba would want from him this time. The only way to obtain definite answers from Aoba so far had been to ask him simple yes-no-questions and Aoba reacting to them by either nodding or shaking his head, if he reacted at all. But Aoba had just 'spoken' to him earlier, so Clear took the risk to ask him differently this time, his voice was still a little shaky though.  
"What is it, Aoba-san?"

Aoba... smiled a small smile for the first time since forever and Clear's heart skipped a beat, making him nearly miss Aoba's mouth moving in a way to form unhearable words again.

"Eh?", Clear was stunned at the request. "You want me to... sing a song for you?"

Aoba nodded and mouthed 'that one' to reassure Clear. Clear was touched and had difficulty not to start crying again, only nodding with a faint "of course" before he cleared his throat with effort and started to sing his Jellyfish Song for him. As he let out his gentle voice telling from jellyfish swaying gently in the vast ocean and dreaming, he felt Aoba's body relax under his embrace until he felt him slipping into sleep. Holding him in his arms for a little while longer, Clear then gently placed Aoba on the bed with his head on the pillow and pulled up the sheets to keep him warm.  
Clear would have loved to settle right next to him and embrace him during his sleep, but he didn't allow himself that luxury and decided to sit in front of the bed and watching Aoba during his sleep. An old fear of a beloved person simply dying in his sleep like it his grandfather had resurfaced in Clear and the sudden realisation hit him, that it was even harder to tell for him whether Aoba would wake up again now, seeing as his eyes were invisible below the blindfold, his breathing was nearly unrecognizable with his thin body being obscured by the broadsheets' folds and the fact that Aoba could barely move on his own.  
Silent tears rolled down Clear's face again.  
He had taken the life out of this wonderful person and his heart throbbed greatly at the thought that now that Aoba's emotions seemed to resurface again for some reason, he was more likely to suffer from the loss of his body parts. This was just no life for a living and breathing human being, it was only suffering.

The worst part of it all for Clear was that he didn't even need to ask himself why Aoba was in that state, he knew the reason perfectly well. He simply had wanted him to be like that and he had acted on his own demands, not taking Aoba's wishes or health into consideration and only thinking that he would love him even more if he became something akin to himself. Clear could not become more human but Aoba could become less human, that was the mindset Clear had acted upon - nothing more, nothing less. He even had felt happy as things had progressed the way Clear had wanted them to, even though he had noticed Aoba's suffering even then. He didn't care about it, or rather he had been sure it would be worth it in the end.  
Aoba didn't even seem to be angry at him for all he had done to him. Clear wished he would despise him, curse him, hit him or something comparative to that. He felt the need to be punished but nothing happened, so all he had was his self-loathing circling in his mind.

There was still hope for Aoba, though, since Sei had promised to give his body to his little brother. It would mean that Sei would have to die, though, so Clear still thought it wrong even if he wanted Aoba to get better by all means. The only thing consoling him a bit was the fact that it seemed to be Sei's deepest wish to perish from this world since his soul wouldn't last much longer anyway. He still wondered whether transferring a soul between humans would really work, though, but in light of their Scrap ability it seemed to be possible. Sei had said that Aoba's soul was broken into three parts at least: one being Aoba's usual consciousness, one being the bearer of the Scrap ability and the last one was Ren.  
Thinking of Aoba's Allmate Clear suddenly remembered that he wasn't with Aoba anymore and hadn't been there since all of those things happened in Platinum Jail. Clear tried to remember when he had seen Ren for the last time, but couldn't quite manage to do so. Had Ren entered Oval Tower together with Aoba and Clear then? If so Aoba should have worn his bag over his shoulder that Ren was kept in, but Clear really couldn't reproduce that kind of memory at the moment. Too many important things had happened around that time and even being an android his memory was influenced by the evaluation that only important things were to be kept in his mind and not so important details to be sorted out. Clear groaned inwardly, since Sei had specifically stated that he would need every part of Aoba's soul to heighten the success rate of their body swapping.  
Then a memory of Ren resurfaced inside of Clear's head. He had spoken to Ren in the side street where he had met the Alphas for the first time. Clear had promised the blue furred Allmate to protect Aoba since they were about to enter Oval Tower at that time. He sighed at the fact that he had not managed to fulfill his promise afterwards and even went so far as to harm Aoba himself. How would he ever be able to face Ren again if he was able to find him?  
Suddenly Clear remembered that there was a recognition chip implanted into Aoba's head to allow communication between him and his Allmate and the thing was a sender, so Clear might be able to at least read it's number so he could track it down to its receiving end. He had no luck, though, there was no answer when calling out from Aoba's number on the Allmate's frequency. Maybe there was simply poor reception due to the thick walls of Oval Tower or the floor Clear was on at the moment or they were simply too far apart from each other. But still the bad feeling that something had happened to Ren had arisen inside of Clear and he couldn't keep himself from worrying about it.


	4. Chapter 4

The next day, Clear brought Aoba his breakfast along with the usual items: a spoon and a tube. He had not the slightest wish to use the latter one but if Aoba would refuse to eat from a spoon again, since he pretty much never opened his mouth when offered one, Clear might have to resort to force feeding him to keep him alive once again. He drew his breath through his teeth with a hissing sound and sighed in a dispirited way before entering Aoba's cell. Clear wondered if Aoba was still asleep for a moment, but he turned his head in Clear's direction as he came to a halt next to Aoba's bed.

"Good morning, Aoba-san. Have you slept well?", he greeted him and Aoba lay there silently. But then he pressed his lips into a thin smile and Clear answered him in the same way, even if Aoba couldn't see it. He took a seat at the edge of the bed and helped Aoba up, holding him close in his left arm before offering him some of the paste-like food on a spoon with his right hand.  
"Would you like to eat something, Aoba-san?"  
Aoba sniffed at the food offered to him and felt the tip of the spoon lightly touching his lips. A few seconds ticked away with nothing happening, but then Aoba opened his mouth and allowed Clear to feed him. Clear choked up immediately, but held back his tears while his aching heart absorbed even this slight gesture of renewed trust towards him like a sponge and filled him with gladness.

Then he dipped the spoon into the food anew, offering it to Aoba again.  
"Another bite?"

Aoba cooperated until he had completely eaten his fill and Clear was very happy that a little spark of wanting to live seemed to have resurfaced in his treasured person.  
"Thank you for eating up all of it, Aoba-san."  
Clear's voice shivered a little since Aoba's willingness to eat had lead to Clear's eyes being flooded with tears once again after all. Had he been human his eyes would have been completely bloodshot by now, but the worst thing that could happen to him was that his tears might run out literally and he became dehydrated as a result. 

Clear gently stroke away a bit of puree stuck to Aoba's chin and a few hot tears dropped on Aoba's cut off calves. Clear's fingers being closest to a part that Aoba could still move freely, he nipped at Clear's glove weakly with his teeth, trying to tug it off.   
"Aoba-san?", Clear answered him in surprise and took his glove off before holding his bare hand in front of Aoba, who snuggled into his palm, rubbing his cheek against it until Clear freed his other hand from fabric and cupped his face with both hands, putting their foreheads together. Being close face to face, Aoba gave Clear's cheek a lick, tasting his insipid tears and startled Clear, even as he repeated it on the other side of his face.

"Are you trying to console me, Aoba-san?", Clear sniffed, "I don't deserve it. I just don't..."

He hugged Aoba desperately, shivering while tears continued to run down his face. Aoba felt him tremble and heard him sob, even though Clear tried to keep quiet. Having the strong determination to lift Clear's spirits, Aoba began to stir in Clear's arms until he let go of him.

"I'm sorry, Aoba-san, did I hold you too tight?", Clear asked insecurely and looked at Aoba while still holding his shoulders to support him. Aoba shook his head and Clear asked him with deeper uncertainty in his voice: "Maybe you didn't want to be held by me at all?"  
He earned himself a stronger shaking of Aoba's head at the question and a somewhat pouting look like Aoba was angry of being misunderstood. Aoba started to wriggle his upper body in an effort to break free of Clear's hold, who let go of him with a worried look on his face.

"Aoba-san? What are you--Eh?"

Clear watched Aoba in astonishment while he slowly moved his hips and cut off legs to slide down Clear's body, leaning his head against Clear for support until he had brought himself in a position to lay on his left shoulder with his head coming to a halt in Clear's lap.

"Aoba-san?", Clear asked in a confused voice, not really getting what Aoba wanted from him. He didn't believe he might want to be patted on the head since the sensations in his hair seemed to have heightened together with the oversensitivity of his body. Suddenly he felt Aoba move his head and his mouth seemed to try reaching out for something with his teeth and tongue until he had found the little zipper on Clear's pants and slowly tried to pull it down.

"A-A-AOBA-SAN?!"  
Clear went stock still with shock and embarrassment, immediately blushing up to his ears and fidgeting upon the implication of what Aoba seemed to plan on doing. He grabbed his shoulders to put a stop to Aoba's actions.  
"N-N-No, Aoba-san, you mustn't! You can't--"  
But Aoba was surprisingly persistent and rubbed his chin on the opened up gap in Clear's pants, kinda roughly massaging his dick through his underpants.  
"Uh..."

Clear was at a loss of what to do, but it seemed like Aoba wanted to go through with this, since he began to nip at the button above Clear's zipper in a frustrated way next. Clear breathed out a cornered sigh and then let go of Aoba's shoulders to reach down to unbutton his pants himself.  
"I understand, Aoba-san.", he uttered in a submitting tone, "If this really is what you want to do then..."  
He freed his penis from his underwear and waited for Aoba to continue, giving him enough room to back out in case he had second thoughts.  
"But you don't have to do this, rea--Ah!"  
Aoba began to lick Clear's shaft like a candy cane from all sides, including playfully moving his tongue at its tip before taking the whole thing into his mouth.  
"Aoba-san...!"  
A suppressed moan escaped Clear's lips as he saw the display and felt Aoba's caressing, becoming hard immediately and prompting Aoba to let go of his swelling cock for a moment to readjust before sliding his mouth down on him again. It was a bit difficult, but Aoba started to bob his head up and down, beginning to caress Clear's erection by varying between using his tongue and pressing down on it with his lips as he slid up and down the other's length.

Clear panted hard already. It had been a while since he had done anything this close to sex with Aoba and it was not only the first time Aoba had come on him willingly instead of trying to escape his touch, but also the first time he gave him head. Clear wondered if he was dreaming, but the stimulus rushing up from his loins felt too real and too strong for something like that, so all Clear could do was trying to shove away the guilt he felt towards Aoba and tried to enjoy himself for the moment.

"Aoba-san... Aoba-san. Aoba-san...!", murmuring his beloved's name over and over again in a fluttering voice between gasps for breath Clear had difficulty not to grab Aoba's head to shove him down onto his cock even deeper for fear of hurting his hair. So he grabbed fistfuls of sheets behind himself instead and clung to them desperately.  
Aoba seemed content with Clear's reactions and started to go down on him more forcefully, even bold enough to make lewd slurping noises as he sucked on Clear's erection, thinking it might arouse Clear even more - he was right.

"Ah! Aoba-san! Already... I'm about to...!", Clear alerted him and lightly put a hand on Aoba's shoulder, warning him again with a constrained voice, "I'm coming, Aoba-san, let g--Nh!"  
It was too late already and Clear unloaded his semen in Aoba's mouth who let go only then, earning himself a spurt of come on his face and flustering Clear immediately.  
"Uwah-wha-wha-wha-wha! Aoba-san, I'm sorry! Let me--Eh?!"

About to wipe away his cum, he witnessed Aoba lick his lips that were spattered with the tasteless liquid, smiling with satisfaction at the corners of his mouth. Clear gasped but Aoba only smirked at him, making Clear sigh before helping Aoba to sit up again, finally wiping away his cum. Looking Aoba up and down afterwards he noticed that his lover had gotten hard as well, which made Clear happy, because now he could return the favour.

"It's my turn then.", he said with a smile on his face before gently coaxing Aoba to lie on his back and, after kissing his lips lovingly, trailed down Aoba's body with his tongue until he reached his crotch. Not hesitating for a second, Clear brought his tongue to Aoba's entrance and put it right in, feeling Aoba jolt up as the result and hearing a shocked gasp. Pulling out for a moment to reassure Aoba, he murmured: "Don't worry Aoba-san, I'll make you feel real good for sure."  
That said, his tongue went back right in and he began to rim Aoba, who still had trouble adjusting to the wet feeling up his ass and being caressed in that kind of way. His cheeks turned completely red from embarrassment, distinctly standing out from his pale skin.  
Clear hadn't promised too much, though, since his tongue managed to hit Aoba's erogenous zones perfectly, proven by Aoba's hips quivering at the sensations running up his spine. Clear's hand then slid up Aoba's cock that was already dripping with precum and he began to massage it to add to the pleasure. Aoba gasped helplessly under Clear's fondling of his sensitive parts, occasionally moving his hips in an effort to feel it even more. He hadn't felt this good in a long time, usually accepting Clear's advances on him only with fear and reluctance and feeling bad after having had his release.  
But it was different this time. His body thoroughly enjoyed the touches of 'his Clear', wanting more the longer it lasted. Aoba yearned for being able to touch Clear himself, but it was impossible, the thought only frustrating him, so he tried to ban it to the backmost corner of his mind to keep relishing the prickling feelings from his lower regions.  
Then he gasped sharply - he was close.

Clear noticed Aoba's breathing becoming more and more erratic and he moved the hand massaging his cock harder and faster while simultaneously trying to heighten the pleasure from below, too. Aoba bent his back and came hard with gritted teeth and held breath, spattering his cum over Clear's hair in the process. Clear waited for Aoba's shivers of bliss to die down before he moved his head and hand away, brushing over his own hair in a swift gesture and licking Aoba's cum off his fingers - it was a bitter taste.  
Since Aoba couldn't see it, Clear added "Delicious." with a sly grin on his face that had been audible in the way he spoke, prompting Aoba's face to turn even redder than before. After he had pressed his lips together hard, he mouthed a silently threatening "You...!" in Clear's direction.  
Clear only chuckled as he covered Aoba's body with his own, careful not to put too much weight on him, just enough so Aoba could feel him. He whispered into Aoba's ear before licking it: "Payback for what you did before, Aoba-san~"  
Hearing a faint huff in his direction Clear laughed softly and nuzzled Aoba's cheek with his nose while pulling him into a hug and whispered with closed eyes: "I love you, Aoba-san."  
After a moment he felt Aoba's jaw move in response and blinked at him, having missed what Aoba wanted to say.  
"Eh? What did you just say? I didn't catch that."  
Aoba hesitated for a moment but then repeated to mouth "Me, too." in Clear's direction, making Clear's heart skip a beat and he cuddled him lovingly while showering him with sweet kisses.

 

A sudden noise in front of Aoba's cell prompted Clear to listen up and to look over his shoulder, ending his tender moment with Aoba.

There stood a Doberman outside of the iron bars. Clear recognized the dog as one of the security Allmates usually in charge of patrolling the upper floors of Oval Tower and it seemed odd that it appeared here of all places as well. Clear looked closer, seeing that the dog-like machine carried a piece of folded paper and some golden ribbon in its mouth. Curious, Clear gently lay Aoba back on his cushion and told him to wait for him for a minute before getting up to inspect the Allmate further.

Clear knelt down in front of it and reached out to it with his hand when the dog let go of its goods and a virtual screen popped up in midair in front of the Allmate's eyes with Sei's face appearing on it.  
"Hello Clear. How are you and Aoba doing today?"  
Sei smiled at Clear in a friendly way, his question genuine and Clear nodded his head once with a "Just fine, thank you." on his lips, but his brows were furrowed in worry. "How may I help you, Sei-san? What's this paper for?"   
"It's gift wrapping paper used to wrap up presents."  
Sei's explanation didn't make much sense for Clear, so he only returned a questioning look at the screen, prompting Sei to explain further.  
"It's my birthday tomorrow and I want you to wrap up Aoba like a present so you can get past Toue's office and join me in my room with Aoba remaining unnoticed by him."

Clear stared at the paper in disbelief at the thought of wrapping a living human being inside of it, but looking back at Sei he appeared to be confident that his idea would work. Clear felt the need to voice his doubts though.  
"Is this really necessary? I mean... Aoba-san has been put under my care since Toue lost interest in him, so can't I just bring him to you officially?"

Sei smiled a sad smile at Clear before he answered his question.  
"I'm afraid not. Since my outburst upon learning about what had happened to Aoba affected Oval Tower's main system, I've been put under strict orders not to upset myself. Therefore Toue is careful not to let anything near me that might irritate me, even if he doesn't know why it happened in the first place then. But I'm sure even Toue can conclude that seeing Aoba in his current state would surely fall into the 'agitating' category, had I not already been informed about it..."

Clear remembered that incident within Oval Tower now that Sei mentioned it. It had happened a few days before and had even reached him in Aoba's outlying prison cell with his systems on a rampage and him nearly collapsing from the strain put on his body. He had to undergo maintenance afterwards. Nobody had told him that Sei had been the source of it, but Clear could see why Sei was thinking about camouflaging his brother to bring him over to his room. He inspected the wrapping paper again and had another question.  
"Are you sure a present of that size won't be noticed by Toue?"  
"No.", Sei stated while still smiling at him, "Do you remember the plushies in my room, Clear? I already own teddy bears nearly the size of an adult. One of Aoba's size won't rise any suspicion at all."  
Clear swallowed hard at Sei stating that fact so nonchalantly. If he were to wrap Aoba's body inside of that paper, his outlines really might look just like a teddy bear's since his limbs had been cu--Clear shook his head at the image, a heavy wave of guilt washing over him.

Sei's look turned serious upon the view of his shaken up discussion partner and he spoke in a determined tone.  
"I didn't mean to mock you, Clear. It's hard for me to know that it will look just right but is so wrong at the same time, too. But if it's a possibility to trick Toue and get Aoba inside of my room, I'm willing to do almost anything. Even if it means disrespecting my little brother's condition. There's no time to falter now, Clear."

Clear understood Sei's priorities, but having to do this to Aoba still made his heart grow heavy.  
"Clear.", Sei addressed him with a gentle tone in his voice again, "I'm happy that you treasure Aoba so much. I wouldn't ask you to do this if it wasn't absolutely necessary, but bringing Aoba to me has to work this time. I want to see Aoba soon, so I entrust this to you, Clear."

With that the virtual screen in front of the Doberman Allmate vanished into thin air and the dog returned to where it had come from.  
Clear breathed out a heavy sigh and got up from his kneeling position again.

Returning to Aoba's side, he sat down on the bed and let out a small sigh through his nose before opening his mouth to tell Aoba about Sei's plan.  
"I just got informed that we will visit Sei-san tomorrow, Aoba-san."  
Aoba pricked up his ears, uneasiness starting to grow inside of him upon the thought of meeting unknown people.  
"He said he can help you regain what you have lost because of me..." Clear stared at an unfixed point in space, his lips trembling slightly before he moved on with a put-on smile on his face.  
"Isn't this just nice? You'll meet with your brother at your birthday."

Aoba's head turned askew and his lips gave off a questioning look before he mouthed in astonishment.  
"My brother? I have... a brother?"  
Even if it was hard to tell, Aoba looked completely puzzled as he stared back at Clear and turned the input over in his mind.

Clear blinked.  
He hadn't thought about the possibility that Aoba might not know who his brother was or that he even had one in the first place. Thinking about it now he realized that Sei must have been under Toue's care since he was very young, maybe even since he had been a baby if Aoba didn't know about him. He didn't know why Sei knew about Aoba's existence if it wasn't the other way around, too.

Aoba silently moved his lips without forming concrete words, his blinded gaze slightly shifting around the room while he appeared to be deep in thought. He probably had tons of questions about the revelation of having a brother and the prospect of meeting with him, too. Not to mention that Clear said Sei could help him - if Aoba even got that part at all, after having heard about having a sibling.

Clear was unsure what to do, but tried to sound as encouraging as possible as he tried to reassure Aoba about the whole thing.  
"Don't worry, Aoba-san, Sei-san is a very nice person. He even got me straightened up again after I... lost my mind, so I'm confident he can help you, too. We just need to get you to him, so he can--Ah! Aoba-san?"  
Aoba had suddenly bitten into Clear's sleeve and wouldn't let go, giving off a rather desperate impression. It took a moment for Clear to guess what Aoba might be afraid of.  
"I'm sorry, Aoba-san, was it too much at once? I didn't mean to overstrain you or to go over your head by deciding what to do."   
Clear softly stroked Aoba's cheek and continued.  
"Or maybe you're worried that you'll have to go through all of this alone? Don't be afraid then, because I'll be with you the whole time. I'll stay with you, no matter what will happen, I promise."  
Having heard that, Aoba reluctantly let go of Clear's cuff and prompted Clear to kiss his forehead and to murmur soothingly into his ears.  
"It'll be alright, you'll see. It'll be just fine."

Clear appeared to be the one to convince himself about the whole affair the most, though. Maybe this was the reason that the next thing spilling from his lips was his Jellyfish song sung in a way to wash away any kind of doubt or sorrow while he gently rocked Aoba in his arms.

 

After Clear's somewhat chaotic attempted explanation about what was going to happen between Aoba and Sei, Clear hadn't had the courage to bring the topic up again yesterday, since Aoba seemed to have been confused and wrought-up enough as it was. So the way of how Aoba was going to meet Sei was still an unspoken matter between them, even as Clear stood in front of Aoba's bed and held the wrapping paper in his hands. Not knowing how to start, Clear decided to go with the head-on-method.

"Aoba-san? Would you allow me to wrap you up in gift wrapping paper?"

Aoba gave him a perplexed look identifiable by him slightly opening his mouth and tilting his head. Clear became all flustered and stuttered as a result.

"N-no, I'm not joking, nor am I trying to humiliate you in any way, Aoba-san. It's just, that... Well, you know..."  
Clear had the feeling he got it all wrong, but he didn't know how to sell Sei's idea to Aoba in a way that wouldn't sound totally dubiously and he bit his lower lip.  
"I know it might sound weird, but it's just to hide you from Toue's eyes, because we have to pass through his office to get to Sei-san's room and to attend his birthday party...!"

Aoba immediately gasped and started to shiver upon the mentioning of Toue's name and anxiety was written all over his face. Clear flinched helplessly and then remembered that he probably had put the cart before the horse when starting the conversation. Slapping himself inwardly, he tried to start anew.  
"I'm sorry, Aoba-san. I forgot about the most important part today: It's your birthday, too, so congratulations, Aoba-san!"  
Clear took a 90-degree-bow in front of him - only noticeable for Aoba by the slight gust of wind directed towards him caused by Clear's hectic motions and by the way his voice sounded like it came from a different angle now as he continued to speak.  
"I want Aoba-san to be happy and you are supposed to be happy at your birthday especially, so I want you to meet with Sei-san today, since he's the only person who can help Aoba-san in his current state."  
If all went as it should, today would become the date of Aoba's rebirth as well. If not... No, Clear didn't want to think about it. The decision to go through with this would be Aoba's alone. If he was going to decide to take the risk to change bodies with Sei after he had he met him, then all Clear could do was praying and hoping for the best. But first they had to make it to that point.

Clear straightened himself up again and caringly brushed down Aoba's cheek with his fingers while the tone of his voice had turned to sound a bit lost but not less decisively.  
"You don't have to be afraid, Aoba-san. I promised I'll protect you no matter what. I won't ever fail again, I swear. Please trust me with this."

Aoba was still unsure about meeting with this Sei-person whom Clear claimed to be his brother. A brother Aoba had known nothing about until yesterday, not even the fact that he existed. Aoba had been an orphan adopted by his parents at a very young age after being picked up by his father at a beach he had always favored as his safe heaven. He had later ended up staying solely with Tae, his adopted grandmother on his mother's side of the family, since Aoba's new parents were bound to travel the world, unable to stay in one place for too long. His childhood and teen years had been a jumbled up time of ups and downs for Aoba and had even led him to be a violent participant in street fights and Rhyme matches where he shattered the minds of his opponents with his Scrap ability without so much as giving it a second thought. In all those years Aoba had felt an indefinable loneliness inside of himself. It had felt like something was supposed to be there but simply wasn't there and it had irritated him to no ends. Back then Aoba might have thought that being left by his parents and later on loosing contact with his best friend Koujaku for a few years due to him having to move to the main land with his mother might have been the reasons he had felt so alone.  
But maybe he had missed someone else's presence as well.  
Maybe deep down inside himself he had known that he had a brother that was supposed to be by his side.

Was something like that even possible?  
Aoba had no answer to this. 

As for the fact that today was his birthday, Aoba didn't feel anything in particular about the fact in itself. The only thing echoing in his mind was that he had turned one year older after all those crazy things had started happening to him and Aoba refused to think about the time that lay behind him after he had come to Oval Tower, the memories being too painful to reflect on them.  
He heard the rustling sound of paper and turned his attention back to Clear, who had knelt down in front of the bed, looking up to him in a pleading way.

"So, what's your answer, Aoba-san? Will you allow me to wrap you up in that gift wrapping paper to conceal your body from unwanted attention? It seems to be the only way to get you to Sei-san's room safely."

Aoba still didn't fully understand why it had to be wrapping paper of all things to hide him into, but Clear's imploring voice made him nod his head in agreement and earned him a relieved sigh from Clear, who began to carefully place the paper around Aoba before trying to wrap it around him in a way to camouflage him without binding it too tight around Aoba's body. At the end, Clear left some space out around Aoba's head to give him enough room for air to breath before he began closing up his package.  
"I'm going to close up the wrapping now, Aoba-san. Please try to relax, even though it might feel cramped in there. And don't worry about moving around, please, I'll hold you tight and I'll never let go of you. In case Toue gets suspicious I'll think of something."  
Wanting to give Aoba one last reassuring gesture, Clear kissed his forehead and then closed up the paper and put the golden ribbon around it to make it look more like a present instead of a badly packed something. If an outsider were to look at it, the whole package really gave off the appearance of badly hiding an oversized plushie. And Clear depended on the fact that it would look like that.

At the time he had come to Oval Tower with Aoba, Clear had destroyed his key lock in an attempt to fight his android brothers and to revolt against his master Toue, something he was prevented from doing at the moment since his body had been fixed afterwards and the technicians had made sure that destroying his key lock by himself was something Clear was inhibited from doing now.  
Sei's intervention had brought back Clear's soul and Tae's researcher colleague had arranged it so that Clear's actions and old memories would not conflict with his programming anymore, allowing him to act the way his heart wanted him to. But the researcher hadn't touched hardware that was intact, only fixing cooked circuits due to Sei scrapping Clear and the resurfacing emotions that had literally fried his brain to some extent. Toue was still set as Clear's master, so he couldn't go against him. In the worst case scenario, Toue could simply demand to be handed over Clear's 'gift for Sei' to inspect it and if he would find Aoba hidden inside of it, Clear would be unable to do anything about it at all - the thought terrified him. Not to mention that he would have lied to Aoba about being able to protect him, even though he really, really wanted to do it with all his might. 

The only thing he could do at the moment was to hope for the best outcome.

 

With that in mind Clear took Aoba into his arms and held him safely like a child as he proceeded to carry him outside of the cell, along the long white corridors of Oval Tower's research center and finally into the elevator leading up to Toue's office. He couldn't stop himself from giving the wrapped up Aoba in his arms a worried look the whole time the elevator needed to ascent the seemingly endless floors until it arrived at the topmost floor and it's doors opened again. Steeling himself inwardly, Clear stepped out of the elevator and knocked at Toue's door.

"It's Clear. I'd like to visit Sei-san to congratulate him to his birthday, master."  
The word 'master' sounded so fake to Clear's ears when it was directed towards Toue, that Clear grimaced inadvertently, but he tried to sound like his reprogrammed self that had acknowledged Toue as his true master instead of Aoba whom Clear had approved as his master by himself beforehand.

Clear was allowed to enter Toue's office and found the man sitting behind his desk with two Alphas standing behind him, ready to protect their master if necessary or to receive any kind of orders directed towards them.  
Clear flinched inwardly at the memories resurfacing about the last time he had rebelled and the two androids had been his enemies, damaging his body to a devastating state with their relentless attacks. It was hard for Clear's current self to pretend to be just like them - heartless machines that were willing to do literally anything to please their master, harming others without reservation included. But he remembered that he had to keep up a good act to protect Aoba, since he might not be able to defend him otherwise.

Toue had spotted the package Clear carried in his arms by now and laughed at him dryly.  
"My, my, Clear, what a big present you've brought with you. Another plushie to add to Sei's collection?"

"Yes, master. I've heard Sei-san might like this kind of thing so I got one for him."  
Clear's voice sounded emotionless and he could hear Aoba take in a harsh breath and felt a faint shiver in his arms. Was Aoba afraid of Toue or Clear now? He couldn't think Clear had reverted back to his reprogrammed self and was afraid of him again, was he?

Unable to hide his worried look towards Aoba, Toue noticed Clear's change of character and spoke to him again.  
"You seem to be unsure whether you've made the right decision, Clear."  
Clear jolted up at those words and looked Toue in the eye with a slight bit of panic, but the man seemed to be amused if anything judging by the smirk on his lips.  
"Measuring social interactions between humans and adapting likewise is a hard thing for a machine to do, even if they are as refined as you and your brothers happen to be, Clear. But buying a present for a person on their birthday is a nice thing. An unnecessary thing coming from you and being directed towards Sei, but still an interesting choice to make."

Clear felt like an animal on the chopping board about to be killed by the next swing of the knife, but he tried to hide his panic as best as possible, schooling his facial features to look slightly irritated at best as he looked Toue in the eye. His true feelings betrayed him by his actions, though, as he grabbed the package in his arms harder involuntary, earning himself a slight jolt of Aoba and relaxing his grip instantly while forcing himself not to look at Aoba in the act.

Toue still showed his amused smile towards Clear as he continued to speak.  
"Well, you were an oddball from the start and it's interesting to watch any kind of decision you make, Clear. And considering this present", Toue folded his hands, entwining his fingers, and gave the gift a meaningful look, "Sei probably has enough stuffed toys as is, but it might delight him nevertheless to have a new comrade by his side and him being delighted is something I can only approve of. So don't hold yourself back, Clear, the door is over there. Tell me if Sei was happy about your present afterwards."

"Yes, master."  
Clear sighed with relief inwardly and had a hard time withholding to grin like an overjoyed child at the permission to visit Sei and instead showing a slightly pleased yet cold look on his face as he nodded his head towards Toue once and headed over to the large white door that would open up to Sei's room.


	5. Chapter 5

Door opened, door closed and Clear finally could let out a relieved sigh as his back was pressed against Sei's door from the inside and he nuzzled the wrapped up Aoba in his arms.  
"We're inside Sei-san's room now, Aoba-san. It'll all be well soon."

Looking up from his position at the door, Clear could spotted Sei sitting on his bed with Tae standing next to him. Sei gave him a smile but Tae scowled at him, giving Clear's package a critical look. Clear braced himself and headed over to Sei's bed, where he gently put down Aoba onto the sheets and started to unwrap him carefully.

More and more of Aoba's naked body came to light after being freed from the wrapping paper and as soon as he was fully visible, Tae slapped Clear across the face on impulse while glaring at him with gritted teeth behind a quivering chin. The unspoken question of how Clear could have done this to Aoba was visible in her eyes. Sei gently placed a hand on Tae's balled-up fist and assured her that Clear suffered enough already without being chastised physically, too, while Clear had cast down his look and appeared like a scolded child that knew it was in the wrong but couldn't do anything about what had happened.

Nevertheless Clear proceeded to place Aoba into Sei's arms, who smiled at his brother and reached out to hug him gently while their foreheads lightly touched.  
"We are finally able to meet, Aoba, I'm so happy."

Despite having a stressed look on his face in fear of what might happen to Aoba, Clear was relieved that Aoba seemed to relax immediately upon being reunited with his twin and gently cuddled by Sei. That fact alone gave Clear hope. But that feeling vanished upon the realisation that something important was still lacking and Clear's fingers gripped the sheets as he spoke in a downhearted tone.  
"I am sorry, I couldn't manage to locate Ren-san. His signal was either out of reach or simply non-existent..."  
Clear waited for Sei to react, but the young man didn't respond, so he asked: "Will it still work out without him, Sei-san?"

Sei looked up from Aoba to meet Clear's eyes and smiled at him.  
"Don't worry, Clear, I have the definite feeling that Ren is right here with us, so we don't need his physical body."

Sei changed his and Aoba's position a bit so that Aoba's head lay on Sei's shoulder while he embraced him with his right arm. He brushed a bit of Aoba's blue hair over his shoulder so their ends loosely met with Sei's own dark strands. Aoba jolted up a bit at the sensation, but not due to being hurt, but because as soon as their hair was touching Aoba noticed that the pain in his own hair had dimmed considerably. He involuntarily breathed out a sigh of relief before he even knew what he was doing and Sei gave him a light kiss on the crown of his head.  
"Yeah... I know. I'm happy too, Aoba."

"It's mysterious.", Tae commented after having been silent the entire time. Standing next to Sei's bed she had grabbed Sei's left arm and was manually measuring his pulse since Sei had been disconnected from the machines usually supervising his condition so as not to trigger an alarm as soon as Sei's heart rate or other functions of his body would change drastically due to their planned scheme.  
Tae's brows were furrowed as she watched Sei with Aoba in his arms.  
"You had been connected by your hair when you were born and Sei only woke up after we cut it due to the shock of the nerves having grown inside of them being severed suddenly. But even now that connection still seems to be active. Of course I knew Aoba's hair had hurt ever since but that he would even be able to recognize being close to you now because of a few strands of hair lying side by side... It's mysterious."

Sei just smiled and nuzzled Aoba's bangs, earning himself a light smile on Aoba's lips.  
"We've been one once after all. It's natural that it would feel relieving to be close to each other again."

Clear just watched the display of brotherly affection silently, but grew more and more restless by the minute until he finally spoke up.  
"How exactly do you intend to use Scrap on Aoba-san, Sei-san? Your type of Scrap is triggered upon visual contact, right? But Aoba-san... can't see... anymore, so..."

"Don't worry, I've thought about something.", Sei reassured Clear and looked him in the eye.  
"I'm going to set up a Rhyme field, since all of Aoba's senses will still be active inside of his mind. From there on I'm going to scrap him."

"But using Scrap on somebody will cause you to loose consciousness as well, Sei, so the system will force you to log out. How do you intend to prevent this?", Tae interjected with a thoughtful look on her face, but Sei was still confident as he answered.

"My consciousness is not completely here, Tae-san, shouldn't you know that best of all? There are parts of me strewn all over Midorijima's network, though I've tried to collect most of them during the past few days. The biggest part of myself is here now, but there are still parts roaming the radio waves surrounding us and they will prevent the Rhyme system from me logging out. Plus don't forget my avatar is the judge of Rhyme. As long as Toue is not controlling Usui I can bent it to my will as I like. It'll keep others from interfering."

It sounded more or less reassuring what Sei said, but both Tae and Clear couldn't stop themselves from worrying if all would go as well as Sei thought it would. Nevertheless they had come this far to enable Sei and Aoba to meet and to help each other, so Clear gave Sei an affirmative look and Tae gave Sei's left hand a squeeze before Sei shut his eyes and exhaled to open up the Rhyme field.

 

Blue light lit up as the Rhyme field set itself up in front of Sei's consciousness, surrounding him with a wide space anchored in hexagons arranged in an alveolate order to portray some kind of floor and ceiling respectively that seemed to stretch on endlessly.  
Aoba had to have been here somewhere, too. Sei looked around and saw a naked figure cowering on the floor in a distance while hugging his knees and hiding his face behind crossed arms.

Sei went over to him and lightly touched his back while he spoke to him with his gentle voice.  
"Aoba? It's me, Sei. Won't you look at me?"

"I can't.", it was a weak protest accompanied by a gasp at the realisation that he had spoken and Aoba's body shivered.  
"This is not real, this cannot be. I cannot see, I cannot speak. It's all fake. This body is fake. This world... is fake...! It's all... Uh..."  
He sniffed and Sei drew him into an embrace, stroking his hair carefully.

"Yeah, it's an illusion created by your mind. This is a Rhyme field. Do you remember Rhyme, Aoba? You used to play it when you were younger."  
Aoba didn't answer but Sei was sure he did remember.  
"Not looking at me doesn't mean that you cannot 'see' me in here, Aoba. The image surrounding us is directly projected into your mind, so even hiding your eyes won't stop you from 'seeing', neither will denying the rest of your body prevent it from functioning in here. So look at me, Aoba, please. It's important."

Aoba hesitated for another moment, but then finally looked up to Sei slowly, his eyes full of tears as he spoke this time.  
"I will loose all of this as soon as Rhyme ends again. I don't know if I can take it a second time, even though I know it's not real. What should I do?"

Sei smiled at him and brushed a few tears out of his face.  
"It's okay, Aoba. You won't loose anything ever again. I'm going to make sure of that. Just let me in deeper and you will see."

With that, Sei's eyes gave off something like an electric impulse and his mind was dragged into Aoba's consciousness. His surroundings vanished and got lost in darkness for a moment until a light engulfed Sei's body again and he was standing on the shore of a beautiful beach. Gentle waves were rolling towards the shore and a few clouds were hanging at the sky with the sun slightly above the horizon. It was impossible to tell whether it was going to sink or rise, though, since the whole picture lacked any colours, it was simply grayscale. The only dots of colour came from a flock of people standing a few feet away from Sei. It appeared to be a little boy sitting by the shore next to a young man while they watched the sea together and another young fellow who simply stood there on his own, arms crossed and brows furrowed with a scowl on his face. He looked exactly like Aoba.

Sei approached him first and was instantly welcomed with a snarky remark.  
"If you're going to say 'Nice weather, isn't it?' I'm going to punch you in the face."

Sei giggled.  
"What a nice greeting."  
This must be the part of Aoba's consciousness that was inhabiting the power of Scrap. Sei could feel it by the strong and destructive aura he gave off. Plus his behavior seemed to closely resemble the Aoba who had been the rough Rhymer called 'Sly Blue'.

"Nice greeting my ass, I'm not in the mood to talk. What do you even want in here? Don't you have enough minds of your own to take care of as is?"

Sei's eyes widened slightly and he made a small gasp through his nose before looking down a bit bashful at that comment, but this was not about him now, so he straightened himself up again. He told himself not to forget that a defensive reaction was normal inside of another person's mind and he had to get past that if he wanted to talk to the real Aoba, or rather the part of his consciousness that was usually in control of Aoba's body.

"Will you let me pass so I can speak to the Aoba over there, please? It's important."

The part of Aoba's soul that represented Scrap sneered at Sei and gave him a 'no can do'-kind of look.  
"You want to speak to Reason? Forget it. He's not fond of taking any kind of advice from anyone besides Restraint over there."

He jerked his chin in the direction of the person sitting next to the little boy and his side profile was the spitting image of the Allmate Ren's online avatar: a muscular young man with short dark blue hair, golden eyes and a gentle look on his face.

Sei smiled at the image of them sitting side by side.  
"Ah... So Ren's here with you after all. I was worried when I found out that his body had gone missing and the tracking of his chip wouldn't work. I feared that if his body was destroyed he might have gotten lost. But he returned to Aoba safely."

"Fucking dog that he is, of course he returned!", the other Aoba commented angrily.  
"Was confused as shit when he got back here, 'cause he had forgotten what he originally was since that incident in Rhyme after which Reason lost his memories along with him. But guess what Restraint did the first thing after he had returned? Getting over to the little one and sucking up to him again! He's pampering him like always!"

He seemed to get himself worked up quite good, but Sei only looked over to the picture of the small kid and his big friend sitting side by side and it gave him a warm feeling.  
"Well, Ren has always been very attached to Aoba, even when he was an Allmate."

"Tche! Attached my ass...!", the other Aoba spat out.  
The relationship between Ren and Reason seemed to enrage this part of Aoba's self the more he spoke about it, but it only added to Sei's amusement since it reminded him of a little kid that was excluded from the circle of friends he so desperately wanted to be part of, too, so he gave the sulking Aoba a warm smile.

"If you're so concerned about Aoba, why have you not attempted to take over his body?"  
It was a question that had long since nested inside of Sei's mind. This side of Aoba could use Scrap as freely as he wanted to and power-wise that meant he longed for destruction, something he might have been able to use against Clear or his captors in an earlier stage when Aoba's voice was still intact, even if the first attempt at Clear had failed.

"Taking over what now?", Desire glared, "HE decided to let himself be crippled by that fucking robot just because he was impressed by the guy's ONE display of bravery!", he growled and balled his fists. "And don't tell me that I didn't try! The brat used medicine to keep me down and then he was drugged by those damn researches constantly! How is anyone supposed to work like this?!"

Sei waited a moment before he spoke out what could be read between the lines quite clearly now:  
"You wanted to protect Aoba, too, right?"

"Argh fuck it! Yes! I wanted to protect him!", Desire retorted with a renewed fierce look in his eyes, though it looked a little hurt underneath the display of angriness.  
"'Aoba' is all of us after all, but when Reason is in control he's denying my existence all the time! He never listens to me when I've got something to say, but whenever Reason's in a pinch he comes crawling back for help! He's such a hypocrite! But this time I refused! He's in that shit because of his own stupidity! Now he has to suffer the consequences!"  
He had to catch his breath after getting all of this out of his system and Sei allowed him a short pause before he posed his next question.

"Aren't you suffering as well?"

"Eh?"  
Aoba's destructive side flinched and looked Sei in the eye for real for the first time.

"You just said that all of you are 'Aoba', so if he's in pain, all of you are, right? You're all connected."

Desire gave off the sound of a suppressed huff and looked up to Sei like a kid having been lectured and his intentions completely seen through.  
"You really have a talent of cutting right to the case, huh, big brother?"

Sei's smile reappeared on his face as he was addressed this way by his little brother, but his mimic was overshadowed by worry.  
"I don't have much time, so I can't dwadle. I need to speak to Aoba over there. Won't you let me through after all?"

Desire still had a complicated look on his face upon Sei's request and didn't shift an inch from where he stood, straightening himself up now even.  
"That's not a good idea. Reason's mind is really frail now, so he is easy to break. You can see he shifted back to being just a little kid, right? It's a defensive mechanism. He is blocking out reality, because it hurts too much to think about what happened to him."  
He broke the gaze he had held up to Sei and gritted his teeth as a new wave of rage rolled over him.  
"All of that just because he had to fall for that fucking robot of all people! And now he's crippled in mind and body! One gust of wind and he'll literally just break like a shattered mirror!"

"You're very worried about Aoba, am I right?"

"Heck yeah I'm worried!", Desire answered without so much as trying to hide his true intentions anymore, "How could I not be worried? 'Aoba' is also me after all! I've always tried to protect him and then Reason fails with my power and becomes like this!"

Suddenly Sei sensed something else than just plain refusal against the main consciousness' decisions. Was he just...?  
"Do you feel responsible that Scrap on Clear did not work as intended?"

Desire flinched but then crossed his arms in front of his chest vigorously as he huffed angrily.  
"He should have just listened to me from the start instead of suppressing me all the time with the help of that damn medication! Than none of this shit would have happened in the first place!"  
One index finger then flicked towards Sei direction as he continued.  
"And you, yeah you, Mr. big bro! You didn't help one bit so far, I tell you!"

Sei was surprised that the conversation about guilt had turned against him now and rose and eyebrow.  
"Is that so?"

"Of course!", Desire snorted and began to elaborate, "You set that robot straight again. Do you know what that has triggered inside of Aoba? He fucking fell for him all over again, but this time it's not like the 'just taking it and drifting away' sort of thing, no it's the opposite! He wants to be with him like normal lovers would, but it's impossible for him now that he's lost so much of his body! He's trying to compensate, but he's getting more and more frustrated about this whole matter. He's deteriorating even faster than before!"  
Desire pointed behind himself with one thumb over his shoulder.  
"See that beach? It was coloured once, than gradually turned grayscale after Aoba had lost his eyes and a few days ago even the clouds and the waves got slower and slower and are barely moving anymore now. It's slowing down even as we speak. I thought he already was beyond the point of desperation but no, it's just starting and it won't take long until he breaks completely. And I fucking can't do anything about it, that's the worst part of it all, because he won't let me near him!"

"Is Reason afraid of you?"  
Seeing the tormented side Aoba's destructive self portrayed at the moment made Sei's heart grow heavy.

Desire answered Sei's question with a frustrated sigh.  
"...Yes... He's afraid of me, or rather of my power. Damn that coward! When I so much as try to get close to him, I can hear a part of his consciousness break, it's enough to drive me mad. It's just not fair. I gave him my power and HE messed shit up with it but he blames ME for it."  
He looked up to Sei with a questioning look on his face.  
"You also tried to help but it made it worse, so I guess you can understand my point?"

"I can.", Sei reassured him and tried to lighten up the mood again. "And I'm going to correct that."

"Eh?", Desire was perplexed, "Correct it? How?"

"I want you to destroy me with your power."  
Sei had finally been able to voice his own wish that would become true when Aoba decided to help him in return for what Sei had to offer.

Desire gave him a look from top to bottom, seemingly not convinced of Sei's request.  
"I'd like to say 'be my guest' but... why?"

Sei paused before he spoke again with a sort of gloomy voice while stroking his upper left arm with an absentminded look on his face.  
"It's like you said. I'm not all there. I've got plenty of other parts of my consciousness roaming free over the networks of Midorijima. It's just... my soul's been split too far for too long, so I've got difficulties collecting enough spirit to even move my own body properly by now."

The other Aoba watched Sei with a critical look as he got to understand the problem.  
"Your soul is fading then?"

"That's right.", Sei looked up to him with a thin and slightly bitter smile on his lips, "It's too late for me to do something about that already, but you can destroy me and set me free, since I cannot simply die by myself. Toue won't let me and even though my body is a bit weak it's healthy enough not to simply give out on its own. I'll leave this body to you if you do me this favour."

Desire's brows were still furrowed deeply, but he lifted one brow in a guessing gesture.  
"So me destroying you is something like your last wish?"

"Yes."

Desire was lost in thought for a moment but then gave Sei a firm nod.  
"I understand. But you'll have to ask Reason if he's fine with that, as well. This concerns all of us."

"I will if you let me through."

Desire finally allowed Sei to get past him and Sei drew closer to Aoba's main consciousness that had taken on the form of a child. Ren, who still sat next to him and gave the little boy a smile, turned around upon hearing Sei's footsteps getting closer and gave him a suddenly very desperate look.

"Sei.", his deep voice sounded urgently, pleadingly even, "Aoba... He is... Please... can't you help?"

It seemed completely unbecoming for the usually calm and composed Ren to fall apart so much. Plus he asked Sei for his help even though he only knew as much about him as Aoba's other personalities did: That he was Aoba's twin brother and capable of using Scrap - end of story. But he was here, that alone was probably enough proof for Ren that he had good intentions towards Aoba, hence why he asked for his help immediately.

Sei took a seat next to the little Aoba and gave him a brotherly smile as he loosely crossed his arms on top of his knees and looked at him.  
"Hello Aoba."

Reason's childlike figure turned his head around and gave him an answering smile.  
"Hello big brother! Did you come to play?"

"Hmm... that depends. What are you playing?"

"Guessing cloud shapes!", he answered enthusiastically, "It's really easy! Look, look! Over there!"  
His tiny index finger pointed towards the grayish sky where the clouds drifted by in a barely noticeable pace like their time was freezing them in place little by little.  
"That one looks like a bunny and that one over there looks like a dog!"

"Oh, you're right.", Sei had followed his hand and thought that it was a nice little game, but that was not why he had come here. His brows furrowed slightly and he bit his lower lip as he looked at Reason's fragile state. Sei ran out of time he could hold up his Scrap, he could feel it, but hurrying it up too much might hurt Aoba's inner self even further, leading to Aoba crumbling even more. He had to push forward though.

"Aoba, don't you wish to play this game on a real beach with real clouds instead?"

Aoba's child figure seemed to be frozen in place and a single crack like shattering glass could be heard in the distance. Then he turned his head around with a look on his face like he had been thunderstruck.  
"I can't.", his voice sounded mechanic as the sound of shattering glass was audible anew.  
"I can't see anything out there."  
More cracks opened in the distance, gaining in intervals and loudness.  
"And I can't move..."  
The sound drew closer and closer until the sky began to rumble and shake like it was on the verge of falling apart.

"Oi!", Desire shouted over from his far-off position, looking as equally tense as Ren who sat right next to Reason and had his teeth clenched while he muttered Sei's name with stress written all over his face.

Sei closed his eyes for a moment and then grabbed the little Aoba by his shoulders, looking at him determinedly.  
"Aoba, I know it's horrible, but you can't run away from reality like this. It's important that you gather back your strength."

Aoba's reasoning self looked at him, tearing up.  
"But... It hurts so much..."

"I know.", Sei hugged him, "I know it does but I've come to help you make the pain go away. It will be alright, you only need to trust me."

Reason grabbed at Sei's back, his tears finally spilling as the world around them shook violently and the image zapped with distortion more and more.  
"How can you say that? It's impossible! Impossible, I know it! Big brother Sei is lying...!"

"No! I'm not lying! I'll help you, please hear me out!"

"My body won't move anymore and my eyes will not see... I can't even talk to anyone anymore. And Clear is sad all the time, too...!"

Sei gasped.  
Even at this stage the love for Clear was still present inside of Aoba's heart so strongly that it added to his suffering. But on the other hand that could mean it might be usable as a form of motivation, too.  
Sei snuggled Reason and stroke his back of the head.  
"You love Clear, don't you?"

"I love Clear.", Aoba sobbed in Sei's arms, "He was sad that his body can't be human like his heart is, so he tried to make me more like him and got less human by himself. But now he's kind again and even sadder than before and I can't hug him or tell him it's all right. I don't want this anymore...!", the little Aoba broke into a crying fit, the world around them shattering to pieces completely, leaving only a white room of nothingness around them, prompting Desire to run over to the others and kneel down besides them.

"Oi, what is going on here, Sei?! Weren't you supposed to help him? Now look at him, he's crying like a baby! And the sky has fallen, too!", the usually confident part of Aoba's soul fidgeted like an irritated teenager that had suddenly to deal with very adult problems. "Gah... don't cry, it's alright. Ssshhh! Please don't break...!"  
He clenched his teeth and looked around, meeting Ren's gaze by accident and saw surprise written all over his face, flustering him even more.  
"What is it?!"

"No, it's just...", Ren seemed baffled that Aoba's destructive side actually cared so much for Reason, but he was happy to see that instead of just lashing out at Aoba Desire was honestly worried for his wellbeing, so Ren smiled at him a bit.  
"Thank you for your worry."

"Tche...!", Desire retorted weakly with a slight blush on his face, but looked over to Reason's childlike figure still crying in Sei's arms. "What should we do, Restraint?"

"I don't know...", Ren answered at a loss of knowing what to do, "Let us trust in Sei just a little while longer. At this state no one can tell what might happen if we interfere as well now."

Sei rocked Aoba in his arms, thinking what to do but felt that urgency had risen to a point that did not allow for any slow advances anymore.  
"If all you need is a body then I'll give you mine. You will be fine this way, I promise!"

"Eh?", the little Aoba stopped crying for a second to look up to Sei, "Giving me your body? How? And why?"

Sei moved away a little bit from his brother and caressed his cheek with an honest smile.  
"Because you're important to me, Aoba. Plus, it would be the first good thing I could ever do. Please let me do this for you. I won't last much longer anyway. My mind is torn apart similar to yours, but it already feels like it could fade away every second now. It's like my soul can't get back inside of me for long but can't get detached enough from my body either. I want you to free me from this state using your power. Then I would be free from this body that haunted me my whole existence."  
Doubt was still written all over Aoba's face as Sei gently brushed away his bangs and cupped his face.  
"Don't worry, my body's not in such a bad shape. It's complete. It's working. It's just that it's hard for me to move around in it properly now. But with a complete soul inside of it - your soul - it would be whole again for sure."  
Sei felt the anxiety in Aoba's consciousness die down and had the feeling it was only a small step for Aoba to agree with him now, so he gave him another nudge in the right direction.  
"And then you can embrace Clear again, too."

Aoba's eyes widened and a blinding light emitted from his body, until there was no trace left from the child and the adult form of Aoba sat next to Sei, looking at him with hopeful eyes, but a somewhat grim look on his face.  
"You make me such a huge offer, big brother, but when it comes down to it, I'll simply kill you when you ask me to destroy your soul."

Sei gave Aoba a relieved smile regardless.  
"I prefer to call it 'set me free'. And I won't die. You'll move my body and my heart will be inside of your soul. I'll be always with you then. We'll be one again, just a bit differently."

Aoba closed his eyes before he said: "...I see." Then he brought their foreheads together, breathing out a sigh of relief, "Thank you, big brother. Thanks so much for this..."

Sei gasped silently but then closed his eyes as well, enjoying the tender moment of having reached an understanding between each other.


	6. Chapter 6

"So... are we good to go then?", Desire broke the mood between Sei and Reason with a risen eyebrow and a somewhat unimpressed look on his face, earning himself a look from Aoba's main consciousness.  
"You calming down is good and all, Reason, it's just... Sei can't stay in here forever. We need to get to move soon if we wanna make it. I can feel his presence fading, see?"  
He pointed towards Sei and Reason gave him a wondering look when he suddenly noticed that his brother's image seemed to have grown paler compared to a few minutes ago, making way for worry to rise inside of him.

"Sei...!"

Sei gave him a smile that spelled "it can't be helped" to Aoba, before he rose from his sitting position and held out a hand to his little brother.  
"Come with me, Aoba. We need to get your minds inside of my body, so we need to head over to where the main part of my soul is currently anchored to."

Aoba grabbed Sei's hand and was about to follow him, when he stopped short in his movements and turned around to the other reflections of his self. Looking from Ren to Desire, Reason was inclined to take Ren's hand first, but hesitated and held his hand out to his destructive side instead with a small smile on his lips.  
"Let's go?"

Desire was surprised to be offered to take Reason's hand and was about to take it at first, but then he redrew his hand and crossed his arms instead with a sulking look on his face.  
"Don't you hate my anymore, Reason?"

Aoba's main consciousness blinked and then put an apologetic look on his face.  
"I never hated you. I was afraid of you because I didn't understand you. And because I failed with your power one time too often. But you are a part of me regardless and you showed me your worrying side earlier. And even if you didn't stand right next to me when you talked to Sei a while ago, I still got the meaning of what you were saying. Your emotions kind of simply bled through and reached me. I guess that's because we're all on the same plane of consciousness at the moment. So I know... how worried you were. And I'm sorry for the way I treated you. Can you forgive me?"  
He still held out his hand to Desire, whose face had lit up with every word Reason had spoken.

Desire never thought he would be able to reach him anymore but he just had done it without realizing it. And Reason even had accepted him as a part of Aoba's soul now, too. Desire was overcome by an unknown feeling of happiness and took his other self's hand. He couldn't refrain from giving him a snide comment with a grin, though:  
"You are such a dumbfuck, Reason. Don't make me worry about you so much again, you hear me?"

Aoba's reasoning side nodded and then looked over to Ren, who still got no one to hold onto yet. Thus, Ren looked over to Desire and just took his hand without waiting for him to allow it, prompting the other's hair to ruffle up like a scared cat's would have.  
"You-you-you...! Restraint, what are you doing?!", came the flustered remark, but Ren only smiled at him apologetically as he answered.

"I am sorry for the inconvenience, but it's better to hold onto each other while we are trespassing souls. It's saver than crossing borders alone and I can't let the two of you out of my sight, since it's my duty to keep you in balance."  
Desire still fidgeted in Ren's hold, even as he was urged on to move by Reason, but then Ren added: "It's important that I don't loose the two of you, since you are both very important to me."

Desire finally gave in with a defeated sigh then and all of the three parts of Aoba's mind walked in a single file behind Sei who headed for a glistening light in front of them to enter his own mind.

Trespassing borders between their connected souls felt like stepping from a cool white light into the warm sunshine for Aoba. The image of Sei's inner self was a simple white stage with no defined ground nor sky. Just a slight grayish-blue tinge emanating from a thought horizontal line gave the impression of a floor that severed the rest of the whiteness. Even though the colours were cold the radiance of this world was refreshing and embracing to Aoba, giving off the atmosphere of a place about to create life. And then it felt a little like coming home for Aoba, too.

Desire looked around as he went along and then came to a stop while he muttered under his breath in astonishment.  
"This feeling... it's..." He looked over to Sei whose appearance had turned black and white after trespassing their borders of consciousness. His clothes were skin-tight now, aside from a small two-tailed cape draped over his shoulders, and he was covered with a pattern consisting of bent lines and circles. Even Sei's skin, hair and eyes had lost all colour.  
"...nostalgic.", Destruction ended his sentence and felt himself change into a similar appearance without actively willing it, it just happened to him on reflex and he mirrored Sei's black and white semblance. Both their colourless hair had grown until it reached the floor now, too, so their hair-ends slightly touched each other as they overlapped while Sei and Desire stood there side by side.

Desire smiled absentmindedly as he commented: "You feel so good, Sei."

Sei giggled upon hearing that and gave an embarrassed retort in a teasing tone: "A-o-baaa..!"

Ren and Reason gaped at their other mind-part in unison, flustering him.

"What? It's true! Besides even I can make cheesy remarks now and then! It's not forbidden!", it was nearly comical how red his cheeks could turn without colour on his skin as he crossed his arms and pouted a little until he gave their overlapping hair a complicated look. Sei's hair was straight in contrast to the spiky hair of his twin brother, but it still felt like a connection was still there.  
"It just feels like a missing piece has fallen back into place, is all."

Ren and Reason smiled at him since they felt the same way, even if they hadn't been affected by the same change of shape like their Scrap inhabiting personality had.

"It might be because this is similar to how we looked when we were born.", Sei stated with a hint to their appearance, "We had no colour and our hair was connected, keeping us and our powers in balance. But we were separated and the shock led to things as they are now. The urge to create life flooded out of me until I lost myself and the urge to destroy split your soul and drove you to near self-destruction. It is time for us to stop this circle."  
Sei turned around to face all of the Aoba's and smiled for the next-to-last time.  
"Please destroy me now."

Reason swallowed and came forth to embrace Sei, speaking to him in a low, cracked voice.  
"I wish we could have met sooner, big brother."

Sei gave him a pat on his back.  
"Me too, but I'm glad you didn't have to share my fate to be trapped in this tower, too, I really am."

Then Sei looked at Ren.  
"Ren, promise me to keep looking out for Aoba, okay?"

"I will.", Ren reassured him without having to think about it, "Don't worry, Sei. Thank you for being so kind to us."

Sei nodded and then looked at Desire.

"Come on, the two of you.", Aoba's destructive side held out his hands to Ren and Reason until they made a circle around Sei's soul. Looking over to his other selves, Desire gave some words of advice to them.  
"Watch out not to be pulled away together with Sei. We're not supposed to be thrown back and wake up in our old body like we usually would after Scrap. Keep thinking you wanna stay here with all your might; concentrate on that thought!"  
Reason and Restraint nodded at him and then all of them turned to Sei and spoke at the same time.

"Might your soul be freed. I destroy you."

Sei gave Aoba a last, happy smile and slowly dissolved into a white light with a "Thank you." on his lips.

Outside of Aoba's mind, Clear and Tae waited at Sei's bedside for something to happen. It had been only a few minutes since Sei had forced open a Rhyme field and then entered Aoba's mind, but every second ticking away felt like an eternity to Clear as his worried look switched between Sei and Aoba respectively. He noticed a slow change in the colour of Sei's hair as he looked at the place where Sei's and Aoba's head bumped together. The hair-ends of Sei's bangs began to change from black to blue slowly, but the origin of the colour change didn't come from Sei, it was something that bleed into him from Aoba's side. Looking back to Aoba made Clear's eyes widen as he noticed that Aoba's body slowly lost its colour. His already pale skin faded to a point where it came across to be white and some strange blackish markings appeared on his skin at the same time. Even his aqua blue hair lost its colour; though on closer inspection it looked more like the colour wandered from the hair ends up to its roots where the colour now had begun to bleed into Sei's hair. It was an odd process to watch, but the more fearsome fact for Clear was that Aoba hadn't given off any significant signs of life as of lately. Even his already shallow breathing seemed to have started to cease as it came in longer and longer intervals until it stopped completely eventually. Clear broke into a cold sweat and was about to grab onto Aoba to make sure of his suspicion, when Sei suddenly opened his eyes and leaned forwards like having been pushed from behind.

Tae gave a start at Sei's violent stir and then noticed that Sei's pulse swayed violently, too. Clear finally panicked when Aoba fell over unmoving and Sei's eyes flew open to stare straight ahead without looking at anything in particular but with the face of somebody desperately wanting to see. The black colour inside of Sei's irises dissolved into a swirl of amber and he began to perspirate and breath heavily while starting to look around in irritation.

Aoba's consciousness saw Clear sitting next to him first and he mouthed his name in astonishment in a barely audible whisper upon the realisation that he could see him, before he spotted his own body lying next to Sei - a crippled, half haggard young man with a blindfold over his eyes and cut-off limbs. A panic rose inside of himself to an alarming rate and he was close to hyperventilating when a voice shouted at him from the inside of his body, prompting Aoba to look behind himself, but he only stared into a blinding, golden light.

"Reason! Come back here! Don't let yourself be pulled away!"

"Aoba! Grab our hands!"

It were the voices of Destruction and Restraint, feverishly trying to reach him through a whirlpool of dazzling golden light and Aoba's reasoning self felt the need to hold on to their hands as tightly as possible and spun around to grab them desperately.

The shivers in Sei's body suddenly died down and he fell over unconsciously, his hair having turned completely blue now.

Clear and Tae only stared at Sei, not being able to fully grasp what just had happened, but there was no time to think about it since a bellowing alarm started to ring through the whole tower the next second. It was accompanied by a recorded female voice calmly stating to evacuate the tower during the next five minutes due to an emergency. At the same time, countless screens with Sei's face on them appeared everywhere inside the tower and on the outside of Platinum Jail. The warning message was played on loop and the tower began to shiver violently.  
Tae and Clear looked around themselves and then at each other with Tae grasping the situation first. Quickly checking Sei and Aoba for life signs respectively, Tae sighed heavily with a look at Aoba and then stared at Clear with a determined face.

"We have to leave here, Clear! Get Sei's body and then hurry!"

"Understood!", Clear nodded and gathered Sei up in his arms, ready to leave the next moment, but then he looked back at the bed and saw the fallen over Aoba still lying there motionlessly. Deep down in his heart Clear knew it was too late and that he must have died during the process of transferring souls, though Clear's heart couldn't react on the events as fast as his brain did. Still, there was this terribly feeling of leaving Aoba behind that Clear just couldn't fight and so he took a step back and picked up Aoba's lifeless body, too, positioning him on top of Sei's and then finally rushed over to join Tae who had already made it to the emergency door in the back of the room.

"Clear, what are you doing?!", he heard the old woman shout as she saw Aoba in Clear's arms as well, but Clear cut her short.

"No time to explain, Tae-san! Hop onto my back and then I'll get us out of here!"

"Eeh?!", Tae gave a surprised exclamation as Clear knelt down in front of her, signaling her to get onto his back. She complied with a puzzled muttering under her breath that slid over to a frightened gasp as Clear got up and ran out of the door and down the stairs of Oval Tower.

While Sei's frozen face on the screens seemed to watch over the evacuation of Oval Tower as it shook and slowly crumbled, Toue sat behind his desk, his hands folded in front of his mouth and grinned to himself. Behind him the Alphas shouted at him to evacuate from the tower and then groaned under the strain of the tower's main system collapsing and showering them in errors until their circuits fried and they collapsed onto the floor motionlessly with a buzzing sound and smoke emitting from their bodies.

"So this is your answer, Sei? I understand.", Toue huffed absentmindedly as he stared ahead to a specific screen that was completely different from the others.  
Instead of Sei's form that particular screen showed Toue's avatar Usui, spinning around itself in a smooth, dancer-like motion and the letters 'GAME OVER', popped up one after the other while the ten-armed, twin-tailed puppet giggled in a mocking tone and added "What a shame~" to the game-over-message that was displayed in a looped animation.  
Toue had always been a gambler and even though he didn't know how his defeat had come to pass, he intended to accept his fate nevertheless, even if it meant being buried under a giant amount of rubble.

A fair way down, having crossed roughly half the floors of Oval Tower, Clear noticed the tower's main system crashing, too. It was accompanied by an unpleasant wave of electricity filling the air that made even a human's hair stand on end and resulted in countless small electric shocks whenever something else was touched that didn't belong to ones own body.  
Clear was surprised that his own system hadn't given out already yet, clearly remembering how the acting up tower had almost crushed him the last time this had happened. But this was no proof that it wouldn't occur to him at all, so Clear felt the need to warn Tae about the situation.

"Tae-san, I don't know why, but I seem to be unaffected by the collapse of the tower at the moment. That doesn't mean I'm not going to topple over any minute, though, so maybe it would be better if you leave by foo--"

"Don't worry, Clear.", Tae interrupted him as she clung to his back while Clear descended the stairs running, "When my acquaintance reset your system, I ordered him to cut the connection to the tower's main computer back, so it would only recognize your presence, but not be able to influence your actions. I did this so Toue wouldn't be able to undo the reset that easily in case he got suspicious, but it had a nice side effect it seems."

Clear was surprised to hear this and a strong sense of relief unfurled within him upon hearing this news. So he didn't have to leave Tae's and Aoba's side because he would be reduced to an un-functioning heap of scrap metal then. That was a very good thing to know indeed. Looking at Aoba and Sei in his arms, Clear fastened his grip around them to assure that neither of them would fall off until they reached the bottom of the tower and gained some speed while descending the stairs.

A few minutes later the tower shook violently with explosions originating from it's core, the main computer system, and eventually the whole building's structure gave in and crumbled down, reducing the formerly elegant architecture to a misshapen pile of smoking rubble, leaving only a broken skeleton of the tower piercing the sky.

Clear and Tae watched the collapse from afar, having escaped just in time before it was too late. Clear was unsure about the feelings accompanying the tower's destruction. It felt relieving in a way, like he had left a prison - and in a sense that had been the case - but on the other hand a hunch of doubt still hung over the whole series of events that had spread over just a few days.  
Being set straight again and regaining his human heart had triggered so many conflicting emotions inside of Clear that he felt utterly exhausted by it. And then Aoba had switched his body with his twin brother's to become a complete human again. Looking at Aoba's ghostly white face, Clear finally felt the tears building up in his eyes after the realisation that Aoba had died hit him anew. But at the same time he spotted the blue hair on Sei's head and felt a faint moving of the young man's shoulders as he breathed, reminding him that Sei's body was alive. He even had awoken during the transfer of their souls, so "Aoba" was very likely just inside of a new body now. Clear knew that, but it still made him sad that it had come like this.

Unsurprisingly, the whole of Platinum Jail's functions came to a halt after Oval Tower had collapsed as well. The act of the tower's destruction was blamed on some unnamed terrorists by the news broadcast, though what sources those information were based on was never stated. As for the staff and guests inside of Oval Tower during its crash, Sei's emergency message seemed to have reached them all in time, so no deaths or critically injured people were reported. A few of Toue's ex-personnel seemed to have went missing during the tower's collapse, though. The heads of Morphine - an already written off Rhyme group said to have been responsible for recent kidnappings around Midorijima to brainwash people into obeying Toue - seemed to have been amongst them.

Being the vultures the media was, Toue's plans, researches and other activities were brought into light right after the dust of the tower's rubble had barely settled. Toue's company was largely sold to other shareholders and enterprises, including the ones formerly responsible for developing Rhyme and the Allmates. Midorijima then was slowly taken back by the islanders that had been deprived of their land and denied of the access to Platinum Jail including the airports. The political system formerly overseen by Toue was reestablished by the local residents as well.

The whole affair could be seen as an "all's well that ends well" kind of thing if not for the fact that a very important young man was still unconscious and a very worried robot sat by his bedside day by day in hope that he would wake up soon...


	7. Chapter 7

The person lying in Aoba's bed looked like he was simply sleeping and could wake up any minute now even though he had slept for about a week already. His shoulder-length hair was completely aqua blue and it showed signs that it probably would put up a heavy resistance if ever faced with a brush since it had gotten fringy - almost spiky - over the time and would be hard to tame with anything aside from hair gel or a very hot hairdryer by now. His body appeared to be a bit thin but not in a worrisome kind of state yet. But a good meal surely wouldn't hurt this young fellow - if he woke up that might be the first thing crossing his mind.  
His eyeballs moved beyond closed eyelids, signaling that he must be dreaming at the moment. His fingers and toes moved as well and his elbows and knees twitched occasionally, too. Maybe he would wake up soon.

Clear gave him a very long stare while he knelt by his bedside and looked at the person sleeping inside the sky blue bedding. He certainly looked a lot like Aoba, but Clear knew that it was Sei's body lying there. If he woke up, Clear could only hope that it was really Aoba's consciousness inside of this body that would resurface instead of Sei's, because otherwise Clear didn't know what to do.

He had buried Aoba's dead body only a few days ago. Upon asking Tae if she wanted him laid to rest by the Seragaki family grave or if Clear could choose another place by himself, she had given Clear free choice of what to do. But Tae had mentioned that if Clear knew a good place for Aoba's body she would prefer it that way, because she firmly believed that Aoba's soul had connected to Sei's body, meaning Aoba was "not dead yet" and thus it might be a bad omen to place Aoba's body in the Seragaki family grave already. Tae knew it was just superstition, but Clear reassured her that he could understand how she must feel. He had decided to bury Aoba's body next to his grandfather's on a hill overlooking the sea then, since as soon as he had mentioned that this was the only other place he had in mind for him, Tae had stated that Aoba had always loved to look at the sea when he was a kid, so she found it a good spot for his body to be laid to rest there as well.  
It had been a hard task on Clear in the end, though. Before doing anything else, he had removed every item he had forced onto Aoba, like the clamp-like leather straps fastened around his arm and leg stumps or the leathery collar around his neck. Lastly he had even removed the black blindfold hiding Aoba's eyes from view. His eyelids were shut and hadn't Clear known better, Aoba appeared to almost look like he was just sleeping. But his skin was way too pale for that, even though it had turned white anyway. He looked just too lifeless, more like a doll than a human. The realisation of that had hit Clear hard, since making him doll-like had been a former goal of his Toue-programmed mind that had left him with a very warped perception of love and how to stay together as a machine and a human when both had their natural limits. Clear had made him a small coffin, but it was still hard to place Aoba's body inside of it, even harder to close the lid and the worst part was actually putting it inside of the hole digged deep into the ground and shoveling the earth on top of it. Clear didn't know how much he had cried on that day, he only knew that it had worn him out completely and the feeling still lasted even as he sat there next to the person sleeping in Aoba's bed right now.

Sei's body was warm while he lay between the sheets, his chest moved up and down with every breath he took and he opened his mouth a bit occasionally to let out a faint sigh or a small murmur. Judging by the voice level barely catchable to a human ear but easily to recognize for Clear's overly good hearing, it sounded exactly like Aoba's voice. Clear was surprised that something like that was even possible. Sei's whole body seemed to have adapted itself to Aoba's soul, he looked like him perfectly. Not even Clear could determine much of a difference between Aoba in Sei's body and the Aoba as he remembered him to be. They were almost identical by now, it was nearly frightening. The only remaining differences were just a heap of data variances, maybe a slight curve on his skin didn't fit, maybe his facial features were off by a millimeter or his skin tone was not the exact same pinkish complexion Clear's data collation demanded. It was ridiculous - this was Aoba, not Sei, it had to be that way. If he only would wake up and give Clear the proof he so desperately needed that his spirit was really the same as well.

Clear sighed and decided to get up to bring a bowl of water and a washcloth to clean Aoba's body from sweat for today. Stopping at the doorframe, Clear turned around and whispered "I'll be back in a minute, Aoba-san.", to the sleeping person as if he could hear him. Then he vanished out of sight and shut the door.

Aoba slowly opened his eyes upon hearing the noise from the door. His vision was slightly blurry at first but then the ceiling of his room came into view clearly. His body felt heavy and sluggish even as he just lay there in bed. For a short moment he wondered if all the things that had happened to him during the past months had only been just a dream. But then he tried to get up and instantly fell back on the mattress with his arms and legs feeling kind of numb, the feeling being most present below his joints. But he couldn't accept this fact so easily and tried to get up again, resulting in himself gaining too much momentum out of sheer stubbornness to move at all costs and falling out of bed with a thud.

"Ow, ow, ow... That hurt...!", Aoba grumbled as he felt pain rising in his shoulder blade and his back, but then he instantly froze. He had just spoken and even though this was clearly his own voice he had heard just now, it felt strange to him to be able to speak again at all. Clear had removed his vocal cords last, after he had already taken away Aoba's eyes, legs and arms, so technically being able to speak should not feel like a thing of that long ago as Aoba perceived it at the moment. But speaking was a valuable way of communicating and one Aoba had missed dearly, even as he hadn't spoken much on his own accord to Clear after he had operated on him for the first time. His voice had nearly been blocked by his nerves due to sheer fear and honestly, Aoba hadn't known what to say to Clear then either. Still, not talking because you didn't want to and wanting to talk but not being able to do so were two different things entirely. Aoba's voice was back now, physically and psychically. He was not afraid of Clear anymore, quite the contrary, he had missed him dearly all this time his programming had made it impossible to let his true self shine through. When that situation had finally turned around, Aoba was unable to fully get his feelings across since he couldn't speak to him anymore or touch him in the way he wanted to. But now...

What would Clear think of Aoba now that he had switched bodies with Sei?  
His voice had sounded the same to his own ears, but maybe his outward appearance was still Sei's?

It hadn't occurred to Aoba that he might not look like himself after switching bodies with his fraternal twin and the prospect of having arms to hold on to Clear and a voice to talk to him had been far more important to him than how he might look afterwards. But a wave of vanity and insecurity hit him at the same time now. It wasn't that Aoba didn't trust in Sei's on-site good looks, but if his voice had changed to Aoba's own now, maybe his appearance might have done so, too? Aoba threw away the idea as soon as it had occurred to him, since it seemed impossible for a normal human being to adapt like that. But at the same time Aoba thought that Sei and him had been far from normal since birth and pretty much everything seemed possible right now. Plus, if Aoba was able to see his own face now, he was sure he could convince himself of the fact that the body he had inherited from Sei was really his own now.

The mirror closest to the bed inside of Aoba's room was the one standing next to his nightstand and a pile of clothes, so Aoba tried to crawl towards it as best as he could, numb limbs aside, to get a glimpse of how he looked now.

Wide amber eyes stared back at him as Aoba looked into the mirror.  
This face...  
This was his face, right?  
The face he remembered from the time before he went to Oval Tower.  
A face he would see every morning in the mirror when he got ready for work at Heibon.  
Or was it Sei's face after all?  
Was this his chin? His cheekbones? Were his lips supposed to have this curve?  
Aoba simply couldn't remember all of those details, all that stuck to him was the thought that this was how he was supposed to look like - probably.

An unbelievable sense of relief washed over him but was blown away the next second when Aoba managed to take the rest of his body into account. His hair was as blue and unruly as he remembered it to be, but the shoulder length shortness clearly showed that it was originally Sei's hair after all, colour and structure aside. But the way more important thing was: he had arms and legs again! Of course he had them - he had felt and seen them lying in bed already - still, to find them reflected in the mirror also lessened the somewhat detached and foreign feeling of his half-numb limbs. They were part of his body, a complete human's body including all that went with it.  
Aoba's voice shivered as he found himself laughing at his image, his laugh a mix of obstinate disbelief and unbelievable joy.

Suddenly, hurried footsteps came running up the stairs and Aoba's door was thrown open in a way to almost smash it to pieces as Clear stood in the doorframe, a bowl of water and a washcloth held in one arm and clinging to the doorframe with the other while taking in hurried breaths as the stared at Aoba with torn open eyes.  
"Aoba-san, you're awake!"  
Not minding the floor getting wet, Clear let go of the items he had held in his arms and toppled down to embrace Aoba hurriedly.  
"Aoba-san! Aoba-san! Aoba-san!", his voice got more and more emotional as he called his beloved's name over and over again while he nuzzled his hair and hugged him tightly - too tightly.

"Ah! C-Clear!", Aoba tried to wriggle himself out of Clear's grasp but had no chance, "Embracing me is fine and all, but it hurts! You're hurting me! Clear!"

"Ah!", Clear let go of Aoba as suddenly as he had hugged him, his arms suspended in the air like to prevent himself from touching Aoba again.  
"Sorry! I'm sorry, Aoba-san. It's just that I... I've heard your voice from downstairs and first I couldn't believe it but then I had to see you as soon as possible, because I'm so happy, so unbelievable happy to see you up and...!", Clear broke down in tears and brushed over his face with the back of his hand in a useless attempt to wipe away what just had started.  
"I'm just so glad that you are alright, Aoba-san."

"Clear.", Aoba's voice sounded soothingly and he brushed his forehead against Clear's chest before slowly lifting his arms and hugging him weakly.  
"I am happy to see you, too."  
He kissed Clear's cheek and felt him flinch before Clear squirmed himself out of Aoba's embrace, appearing flustered. 

"S-So, Aoba-san...", Clear stuttered and tried to avoid Aoba's surprised gaze, "How are you feeling right now?

Before he answered him, Aoba tried to take a more relaxing sitting position out of and old habit, with his hands behind his back to support himself, but the numbness down his elbows made him slip and hit the floor.

"Aoba-san!", Clear gasped and gathered Aoba up in his arms to put him back to bed, stuffing a pillow behind his back so he could sit upright comfortably and knelt down next to him.  
"Are you hurt? Dizzy maybe? Do you need some water?"

Aoba smiled as Clear's worried questions were raining down on him.  
"Clear... look at me."

Clear did so, albeit hesitantly, and Aoba went on in a reassuring tone.

"I'm fine. My arms and legs feel a bit numb, but I guess that's due to me not being able to fully grasp that they are there again."  
Clear bit his lower lip as guilt pricked at him, but Aoba continued.  
"Other than that, I feel completely fine. A little hungry maybe, but that's all of it."

"I'll be making you something to eat then!"  
Clear rushed to his feet and was already at the door when Aoba lifted his voice again.

"Wait, Clear! Can you send granny over to me?"

Clear stood in the doorframe and appeared to be frozen in place before he answered with a stiff voice that Tae-san was out at the moment to buy groceries, but he would tell her to go see Aoba as soon as she was back again.

The door was closed and Aoba was left somewhat puzzled upon Clear's behavior towards him that seemed a little off today. He had never acted that awkward around him before, like trying to worm his way out of an embrace and such. Plus, Clear had not even cared about the stain of water on the carpet by the door - a guy who would clean up a foreign hotel room to make it more sparkly while Aoba slept and who was generally most comfortable while doing chores. And Aoba hadn't even taken Clear's strained reaction to mentioning his grandma into account yet.  
Aoba sighed and felt the need to start up Ren and talk to him, but then he remembered that Ren's Allmate body had vanished from his side after he had faced Toue and the Alphas for the first time and Ren's consciousness was really a part of his own, so he was inside of himself now and kinda out of reach at the moment. At least that was how it felt right now. Well, Ren hadn't gone away or anything, but.... Aoba pondered how to reach him when his view fell on a bundle of dark blue fur settled at the end of the bed by his feet. It looked like a small dog, a Japanese Spitz to be exact.

But that couldn't be, could it?  
Ren's body had been trashed, right? And since the link to his body had been broken, Ren - Aoba's restraining self - had returned to Aoba's body.  
But then how was this possible?

Overwhelmed by sheer disbelief, Aoba tried to reach out for the fluffy thing, but he had trouble commanding his numb fingers to move the way he wanted them to. Still, after a few tries, Aoba's hands had somewhat grabbed onto the dog's fur and he was able to drag it over to put it on his back and inspect it further. This was definitely Ren's old body. If not for the fact that his model was long since out of production and couldn't be purchased anywhere anymore, the dog was wearing the same spiky collar with a stylized syringe as decoration like Ren had worn it.

Aoba felt happiness well up inside of him while his eyes became blurry with tears as he touched Ren's head to start him up. It took a second longer than Aoba expected it to, but then the Allmate made a faint start-up sound and opened its eyes. Aoba smiled at it, calling it by his name, and the dog barked at him in response.

"Ren...?", Aoba was puzzled, but at the same time felt like he should have expected this reaction from an Allmate without a human's soul inhabiting it. It seemed to be set to default mode, meaning it acted just like the little dog it was modeled after like the earlier models had done it in their days years ago.

"Aoba?"

Aoba heard Ren's familiar voice and made eye contact with the Allmate instantly again, only to have it respond by wagging its tail and looking at him with eager eyes waiting for whatever command to come from its owner, before Aoba realized that the voice he had just heard came from inside of his own mind.  
Closing his eyes and concentrating on trying to locate the voice's origin, Aoba's consciousness found himself floating in an undefined, dark space lit only by a blue light. If he looked further down, he believed to see countless snap-shot-like pictures of himself surrounding the place, but it was hard to make out any details from this distance since it seemed to be on a deeper level. Ren stood in front of him in his online-avatar-mode, sans cape and headgear, though. He only wore his collar, a pair of grayish pants and shoes, leaving his naked, tattooed upper body and face visible. Aoba took it as a sign that there was nothing dangerous around Ren wanted him to protect him from and as a way of Ren recognizing himself as a part of Aoba's consciousness, even though his outward appearance wasn't the same as Reason's or Desire's. He was probably just comfortable with the way he looked since it had been so long since he had taken on that appearance.

Reason smiled at him as he closed the distance between them, but Ren had an apologizing look on his face as he spoke.  
"Aoba, I'm sorry, but I cannot communicate with you the way I used to anymore."

Reason lifted a hand - his spirit free of his body's ailments and fully able to feel the touch - and stroke Ren's cheek in a reassuring way.

"It's fine, Ren. It's just a little strange for me not to be able to talk to you by simply starting up your Allmate form."

Ren softly nuzzled Aoba's palm cupping his cheek and then looked back at him with a complicated expression on his face.  
"I apologize for the inconvenience. Would you prefer me to try re-entering the dog-Allmate's body, Aoba? Although I doubt that it will work this time, since there is no initial burst like when the Allmate's chip went online for the first time. It might be hard to recreate such a moment again."

Reason laughed softly and fluffed up Ren's short, dark-blue hair, making him gasp in surprise and giving Reason an irritated look.

"You shouldn't ask me about that, Ren. What is it that you want to do? It's your decision."

Ren was a bit baffled by his newly gained freedom of choice. Although it had been his own decision to enter the Allmate's body in the days when Aoba's mind was unstable from too many bad things happening around him at once, too. Back then Aoba's adoptive parents had embarked on a seemingly never-ending journey around the world and his childhood friend Koujaku had to leave his side due to being called back to the mainland by his father's family. Plus, there had been the fact that his Scrap ability needed to be released, since he didn't know how to contain his powers properly then. Thus 'Aoba' had been unable to hear his restraining self trying to talk some sense into him to prevent him from hurting people randomly for his own self-satisfaction.  
But now... Aoba was at a state where he had calmed down by his own decision and his destructive self had settled down for the moment as well after being recognized as part of Aoba's soul again. They were more or less in balance again, so Ren didn't really feel the need to separate himself from Aoba's consciousness anew. Furthermore, there was this homely feeling while he stayed within Aoba's mind. It just felt... good that way.

Ren lifted his head after having thought things over and then stated a bit awkwardly:  
"Well... If I can choose freely... I think I'd rather stay within Aoba after all. It just feels... "more at home' like this. It's a little hard to describe."

Aoba chuckled.  
"That's fine, Ren. I want you to be happy, so if you feel better inside of my head instead of inside of the Allmate, let's keep it that way. You'll be here for me whenever I need you regardless, right?"

"Of course.", Ren reassured him and Aoba smiled, grabbed Ren's head with both hands and got on his toes to put their foreheads together in an old ritual they would always perform after doing maintenance on Ren or if Ren helped Aoba with a serious problem.

"Thanks as always, Ren."

Ren smiled back at him.  
"The pleasure is all mine."

Aoba felt like he was engulfed by a bright light and lifted upwards. When he opened his eyes again, he was back at his room with the fluffy, blue dog still staring at him eagerly. Aoba let out a small sound of recognition and then pet the dog's head to shut him down again.

"It's alright, I don't need your assistance at the moment."

There was still the question of why his pet had returned to his side in the first place, but Aoba decided to put the Allmate back by his feet on the bed for now. The movement reminded him of the odd feeling in his limbs again and he furrowed his brows. How long would that last? Hopefully, granny could take a look at him and tell him what to do about it later.

As Aoba pondered on his situation and his thoughts started to circle endlessly in his mind, he had the strong urge to listen to some relaxing music to calm down again. Looking around the room, he found his headphones placed on top of the audio equipment on his nightstand. It was an odd place to put them, but the way odder fact was that his pink headphones were there in the first place. It was sort of with like Ren's Allmate-body. It wasn't supposed to exist anymore but there it was, ready to be used right next to Aoba's side. He was about to reach for them but he realized that they wouldn't work without his Coil, which was the place his music was stashed on, and no matter how hard he looked around the room, this piece of equipment was nowhere to be found in his room. But then his look fell on the pile of clothes peeking out from behind the nightstand. There was a blue pair of jeans sitting neatly folded on top of the pile and a Brain Nuts jacket hung on a clothes-hanger right above it and if he looked closer, right below the jacket there were a matching pair of shoes placed inside of a paper bag as well.  
Where those the clothes Aoba had worn prior to Toue taking hold of him? He wouldn't think it odd for his things to be next to him back in his normal life's days, but...

All of those things had happened to him since entering Oval Tower. He had been stripped off his belongings, his clothes, his limbs and even of his own free will. It was just surreal that his room seemed like nothing of that had ever happened at all.  
Aoba wished he could pinch himself to ensure that he wasn't just dreaming or hallucinating, but the numbness in his limbs was still present so this reality felt "real" enough for him.

He sighed in irritation.  
What was the meaning of all of this?


	8. Chapter 8

A few minutes later, Clear announced that he was back with something to eat for Aoba and entered his room. Aoba gave him a smile as he came in and Clear put a small meal tray with legs attached to it on top of Aoba's lap. The rice porridge placed on a plate was still steaming hot and the smell wafting around Aoba's nose made his mouth water, but Clear told him to wait for a bit until it had cooled down enough to eat.

"Thanks for going through the trouble of making this for me, Clear.", Aoba started a conversation to breach the silence between the two of them and looked Clear in the eye, who after a brief moment of eye contact, looked away from him again, his voice still tense as he answered him.

"It was no trouble at all, Aoba-san. It's something really simple to make after all."

"Clear", Aoba tried to urge him to look at him, "What's wrong? Why won't you look at me? Am I not... looking the right way?"  
There, he had said it and Clear had flinched at his words. Even though Aoba had looked at a mirror priorly, the anxiety not to look like himself anymore was still present inside him.

Clear turned his head in Aoba's direction and his expression was full of doubt. He looked like he didn't know what to say and suddenly a cold chill ran down Aoba's spine for fear of Clear's perception of his appearance. For a split second even the angst of Clear trying to recreate his body again welled up inside of him before he was able to dismiss it as something 'his Clear' would never do to him again.

"No. No, no, no, no, no!", it echoed inside of Aoba's mind while he pressed his lips together firmly.  
He shouldn't even think like that.  
It was wrong.  
That wouldn't happen.  
For sure.  
It wouldn't.  
Impossible.  
Clear loved him the way he was now.  
He had to--

And then Clear finally hugged him, easing all of his stress by one simple sign of affection towards him.

Aoba exhaled with relief. 

"I am sorry for not telling you this earlier, Aoba-san.", Clear stated in a slightly shaky voice, but then drew back and looked him in the eye directly with a firm expression on his face. "Aoba-san is looking like Aoba-san perfectly. Please don't worry about it."

Aoba nodded and Clear smiled at him before his view fell on the still steaming rice porridge on Aoba's plate.  
"Would you like to try eating something now, Aoba-san?"

"Yeah.", Aoba sighed contentedly and allowed Clear to feed him. Clear was careful with how he spooned up the food and blew on it before bringing it to Aoba's lips. It was a bit odd for Aoba to still need help with that kind of activity even though he had hands to hold a spoon himself again now. But he knew that he wouldn't be able to hold onto any kind of item strongly enough not to drop it again at the moment, if he even got so far as to grab it in the first place. Plus, as long as Clear was helping him eat, he would stay by his side, so Aoba was fine with being helped by him for now.

"Is it tasty, Aoba-san?", Clear asked between bites and Aoba answered him.

"Yeah, it tastes good. I kinda wish it was something with a little more substance, though.", he grinned at Clear, who looked a bit troubled when he spoke again.

"I'm sorry it's nothing fancy, Aoba-san, but I thought it would be better to make something easy on the stomach first, seeing as I didn't know how your body would take it..."

There it was again, Aoba thought, that upset face Clear was making for a while now. Did Clear feel bad for his condition? But Clear had tried everything he could to make it better already, had he not? He had taken him to Sei, had brought him back to granny's house afterwards and was nursing him back to health now. What else did Clear think he might expect from him if he was unsatisfied with the situation? Maybe it was a lack of recognition from Aoba's side?

"Clear", Aoba addressed him, putting one hand on top of Clear's, "I'm fine now. You're by my side and you're trying to make me feel better. I don't wish for anything else right now."

Clear looked at him like he doubted everything Aoba had said. Or maybe Aoba was in the wrong and hadn't found the right words to say? Trying to convince Clear that he was quite happy at the moment, he pointed out some of the things he had recognized Clear had done for him.

"You even rescued Ren's old body, didn't you? I was astonished when I found him sitting by my feet earlier." He looked over to his nightstand. "And my belongings from before I was brought to Toue's researchers... You even got your hands on those things somehow. How did you do this?"

Clear seemed uncomfortable to be asked those things, but then he answered Aoba, who smiled at him reassuringly.  
"When I went to my grandfather's house, while you were asleep, because I...", he couldn't tell Aoba that he was there to gather some tools to bury Aoba's old body, so he left out that bit of information, "...because I needed to take in some fresh air, I found Ren-san on the junkyard my grandfather used to manage. It seems like it was still used to get rid of Platinum Jail's trash now and then and I collected him to bring him back to you."

Aoba made a small noise of acknowledgement, but felt like he was betrayed of part of the story.  
"But Ren was broken, wasn't he? Did you repair him as well?"

Clear shook his head before he continued with his narration.  
"No, I couldn't repair Ren-san by myself, because I have no knowledge of how to do such a thing. But I remembered Noiz-san's skill with computers, so I asked him if he could fix Ren-san. He agreed to do it, but he told me he couldn't find the personality settings he had before and could only reset him to factory settings, so therefore he'll act like a real dog would now."

Aoba was astonished that Noiz of all people would agree to help with repairing his Allmate, but then again the guy had shown significant interest in Aoba doing a Rhyme battle with him, going so far as to break into Aoba's room and search his computers for useful data once before. Maybe the will to help Ren stemmed from this initial interest in his Allmate's settings due to wanting to fight Aoba in Rhyme?

Looking up to Aoba, Clear furrowed his brows as he added something dispiritedly.  
"I am sorry it was impossible for Ren-san to return to you after all, Aoba-san."

"Ah, don't worry about that, Clear.", Aoba ensured him and gave him a smile, "Ren is right here with me, so it's fine."

"Eh? He's... here with you, Aoba-san?"

"Ah...!", Aoba had never mentioned that Ren was a part of his soul to Clear and honestly, it was kind of an odd theme to discuss, so he didn't know what to say now. But then he saw Clear's eyes lit up and a relieved smile washed over his face as he answered him.

"Is that so? How wonderful, Aoba-san. I'm relieved to hear that."

Aoba blinked. That response was kinda weird he thought. But if Clear didn't ask what was going on then Aoba didn't have to invent any attempts to explain it, so he guessed it was fine... more or less.

"So what about my clothes, where did you find those?"

"Ah...!", Clear looked as uncomfortable as a kid getting caught with one's hands in the cookie jar before he let out a sigh and started to explain about that.  
"These... aren't actually your clothes, Aoba-san. I don't know where they went after we were... separated by Toue."  
The memory of that day and what it had brought upon the two of them still hurt, but Clear tried for a forced smile and continued.  
"But I thought you might miss your old look when you're unable to wear your favorite outfit on the streets of Midorijima as soon as you get better, so... I tried to get hold of the same model of clothing."

"Eh?", Aoba was surprised to hear that, "But... it's a Brain Nuts jacket with matching shoes, you can't simply get your hands on that anymore. I heard they sold out a few days after I bought it at the usual store. And the brand is known for it's limited amount of stock, so if it's sold out once it stays like this. Therefore some people just buy it to sell it for a large amount of money on the net after it's sold out. Don't tell me you still bought it for me, Clear?"

Clear fidgeted upon realizing that Aoba knew how hard it must have been to get his hands on his clothes and remembered how he had run around the whole town, nearly the whole island, just to find something for Aoba.  
"No, I didn't buy it for Aoba-san, since I didn't have the money to do so. Thankfully, Aoba-san has very nice friends, who are willing to share their belongings with you, so I received the jacket and the shoes from them."  
Thinking he was finished with the theme, a sudden thought struck Clear and he hastily added: "Ah! But I washed the clothes and cleaned the shoes thoroughly, so you don't need to worry about the fact that they are used items, Aoba-san!"

Aoba was perplex, but not for the fact that he was in possession of someone else's stuff now. He did have a few good friends in Midorijima, he was sure of that, but who exactly was this generous sponsor of his beloved clothing brand?  
"Who gave their stuff to me, Clear? I kinda really wanna know now and I want to thank them later."

"Uhm...", Clear seemed to need a moment to come up with an answer to that, but didn't seem satisfied with it as he tried to put the right words together, "Sadly I didn't catch the person's name, but he was a friend of a man named Mizuki-san."

"A friend of Mizuki's?", Aoba retorted, "How did you get to know him?"

"Well...", Clear twiddled his thumbs as he answered, seemingly embarrassed to admit that he hadn't been able to do accomplish his task completely on his own, "Koujaku-san saw me running down the streets and then he asked me what was wrong and I told him I was looking for the clothes you wore since you lost them due to the collapse of Oval Tower and then he said that if I needed a network of people to get their hands on some stuff, I should ask the leader of Dry Juice, Mizuki-san, for help."  
Suddenly giving a start like he had forgotten something important, Clear jolted up and added: "Ah! Koujaku-san has been visiting Aoba-san a few times already and I'm supposed to tell you to get better soon and to visit his shop as soon as you feel up to it."

So Clear had searched high and low for a way to present Aoba with his favorite things to wear and one of Mizuki's pals was so nice to give him his clothes - maybe Aoba even knew the guy, he knew a lot of Mizuki's Rib team members after all. And Koujaku was worried about him as always and even Noiz was a nice kid and tried to help him, even if it might not have been free from selfish motives.  
Aoba smiled to himself as he felt warmly affected by the kindness shown to him by other people.

"So, what about my headphones, Clear?", Aoba asked with a side glance at the pink item sitting by his stereo.  
"How did you get them, Clear? I'm curious about the story behind those as well."

Aoba waited for an answer of Clear eagerly, already guessing that those must not be the ones he had possessed originally, too, but as with the clothes Aoba knew the headphones belonged into the hard-to-get-category since he had bought them a long while ago already.

"Uhm, well, these are a present from Haga-san.", Clear began his narration, "When I told him I couldn't find your headphones he said that they aren't in stock anywhere anymore but he knows somebody who knows somebody or something like that. And after phoning around for a while he received a package a few hours later with the headphones inside of it. Honestly, it was kind of magical, Aoba-san."

Aoba snickered.  
"Well, Heibon IS specialized into getting things you can't get anywhere else anymore after all."  
Still, he was thankful that Haga-san had went through the trouble of acquiring something Aoba had set his heart on and would miss very much when he didn't have it anymore. Even if his coil was still missing as the sender, it would not be hard to buy a new one later and his beloved music from GOATBED was safely stashed on CDs in his room and on an external drive.

"Ah!", Clear seemed struck by an annotation he wanted to give once again.  
"I was instructed to tell Aoba-san to get well soon from Haga-san, too."

Aoba smiled happily like he hadn't done it in a long time now.  
"Hahaha, what should I say to all of this? It's like... I kind of feel very much loved by everyone right now."

Clear studied Aoba's face and felt that his smile was the best thing happening to him in ages. Just for this smile alone all of the desperate searching, running around town and asking people for help in hope that he could make Aoba feel better even just a little bit had been more than worth it.

Aoba turned his head in his direction and his serene smile hit Clear directly while he poured affectionate words over him.  
"You're so cute, Clear. Going through all that trouble just to make me happy. I love you. I really do. Thank you so much for this."

Clear's eyes widened as he let out a gasp through his nose.  
This was... just...

"I am back!", the voice of a certain spritely old lady suddenly echoed from the front door on the first floor, ending the tender moment between the two of them in a split second and making Clear's heart sink together with it.

But at least Aoba didn't seem to mind as a different kind of smile brightened up his face and he looked at Clear enthusiastically.  
"It's granny, she's back!", he announced to Clear, whose face had crumbled apart from its delighted state, but Aoba took no notice of this as he called back to his grandmother from his room: "Welcome home, granny!"

The noises of a person rummaging down in the foyer suddenly came to a halt for a moment, but then continued and soon the footsteps of Tae as she climbed up the stairs could be heard. Clear's face had fallen in a way that he looked utterly alarmed and he slowly but surely made his way to the balcony door before Aoba had even realized him doing so.  
"Eh? What are you doing, Clear? Granny just came back, let's greet her."

"Uhm...", Clear was unsure how to tell Aoba of his strained relationship with Tae at the moment, but due to hearing her footsteps drawing closer and closer, he decided to go for a very short explanation.  
"I'm sorry, Aoba-san, but I promised Tae-san not to set foot into the house as long as she is at home, so I have to go now!"  
Said that and ran on the balcony and from there jumped onto the roof while a pretty stunned Aoba could only look after him in wonder.

"What exactly has just happened?", Aoba pondered aloud, crossing his arms, but then he heard a knock by the door to his room before it was opened and Tae stepped inside.

"Aoba, you are awake?", she asked while drawing closer to his bedside.

Aoba smiled at his grandmother who he hadn't seen for a very long time now. He had been somewhat in knowledge of her presence during his visit in Sei's room, but a lot of things had happened then and he didn't have the chance to greet her properly.  
"Granny, I'm so glad you are here.", he told her with a smile and Tae embraced him carefully but warmly before she looked him over searchingly.

"How are you feeling? Does everything feel alright? Does it hurt anywhere?"

Aoba let out a small sigh through his nose before he tried to reassure Tae of feeling quite well.  
"I'm okay, granny. The only problem I have is a numb feeling in my arms and legs, but otherwise I feel fine."

"Numbness in your extremities? That's rather odd...", Tae furrowed her brows and took one of Aoba's arms in her hands, feeling it up and down.  
"Can you feel me touching you here?"

Aoba tried to concentrate on the feeling and then nodded his head.  
"Yeah, but it's kinda... a dull feeling, like it's asleep or... well... far away. I can move everything, too, just... the feeling is not all there."

"Hmm...", Tae grumbled and put her right hand to her chin in a thinking gesture, "I wonder what the reason might be... But Sei once mentioned that he couldn't move his body properly due to his soul not inhabiting it strongly enough. I don't think that's the reason now, though. It's probably a little different for you. Your soul isn't used to inhabit an intact body anymore... so maybe you need to remind yourself of having those limbs again."

Aoba looked down on the hands resting on his lap, wondering if him not being used to having those limbs anymore really might be the reason for this odd sensation he was experiencing, but if all he had to do was to get to know this body - Sei's body - better, then he thought he could manage.

"For now I think it would be best to try doing some exercises to get used to your arms and legs again and to built up some muscle strength while you're at it. I'll look up a training programme for you."

"Thanks, granny, I'll try that.", Aoba was really grateful to have Tae by his side, but then he was reminded how odd Clear's behavior had been prior to her entering the room and he wanted to know what had happened between them.  
"By the way, what's going on between you and Clear, granny? He was here just a moment ago but then he said he had to leave because you had entered the house. What's the meaning of this?"

The furrow between Tae's brows was back and seemed to grow even deeper now then before, as she made a grumbling sound before she looked over to the balcony door.  
"Clear! Come down from the roof! I know you can hear us quite fine from up there but we have to talk face to face right now."

After a moment had passed with nothing happening, suddenly a rustling on top of the roofing tiles could be heard as somebody walked over them and then Clear dropped down onto the balcony in front of Aoba's room before entering his room again. He looked pretty down as he came closer and stopped next to Aoba's bedside.

"So, Aoba wants to know why I forbade you to enter this house whenever I'm around and only allow you to look after Aoba when I have to leave. Well... tell him."

Clear flinched under Tae's order and looked Aoba in the eye for just a second before he fixed his stare onto the floor.  
"It's because... of what I have done... to Aoba-san during our stay at Oval Tower."  
He looked at Tae pleadingly, but the old woman just told him to go on and so he got more into detail.  
"I... mutilated you, Aoba-san. I took away your eyes, your arms, your legs, even your voice and all of that just for my own self-satisfaction and nothing else. Therefore..." His fingers were clenched at his coat. Saying all of those things out loud made them all the more more real for Clear, even if he hadn't forgotten about it anyways. He shivered while he continued to speak.  
"Therefore... I have no right to be by your side any longer, so Tae-san won't allow me to be with you if it's avoidable."

Aoba's jaw dropped while he stared at Clear's angst-ridden face and then he looked at Tae, blinking once, twice, before trying to find his voice again.  
"What? I mean... I don't understand this, granny."

Tae grumbled before elaborating further.  
"Hmpf! Are you telling me you really don't get the graveness of the situation, Aoba? Should I have let a person who has harmed you so terribly just stay by your side like nothing had happened? I certainly wouldn't want such a person next to me. But since I need to leave the house now and then it was inevitable for me to allow Clear to watch over you from time to time. Still... you were unable to consent to his presence next to you, so I wanted to ask whether you would allow him to stay by your side after all he had done to you when you're conscious again before I decide what to do with Clear, or rather how to handle him."

Aoba still was puzzled. Of course he wanted Clear to be near him. He loved him after all. Clear was important to him in so many ways... and yet... Yet... he had done all those horrible things to him just a short while ago. He knew that, of course he did. His heart might have chosen to ignore the facts for the time being but that didn't change the past events now circling around in his mind again.  
Still...  
"I cannot imagine not to be by Clear's side, grandma."  
Those were his honest feelings and he underlined his statement by looking Tae straight into the eye.

"A-A-Are you sure... about that, Aoba-san?", Clear's shivering voice reached Aoba's ears and he looked like he was on the verge of tears, "Those things that I've done to you... Toue's reset of my personality aside, I did all of that because I wanted to do it. Nobody forced me. It was my own free will. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if you ordered me to destroy myself, Aoba-san. I-I'm... I'm ready for it."

"What? No! I would never want that!", Aoba gave a shout, startling Clear and even his grandmother next to him with his sudden panic. "For God's sake, don't ever think like that, Clear! I don't want you to be destroyed, I want you to be with me!"  
He weakly lifted up one arm and tried to reach Clear's shivering hands, but had great trouble doing so, so Clear took a step towards him and entwined their fingers, then slowly closing them a little while Aoba tried to do the same as he looked up to him.

Aoba's voice grew warmer as he added: "I want us to be together, Clear. For you to talk to me, be there for me, to just be by my side. I would never order you to self-destruct, ever. I couldn't imagine a world without you."

"Aoba-san.", Clear teared up at those words and slapped a hand on top of his eyes while trying not to let out his sobs too loudly.

Tae sighed in a defeated way at their display of affection and then shook her head while turning around and headed for the door.  
"Do what you want then. There's no helping the two of you anyways it seems."

Aoba watched Tae's back as she left his room and his face lit up with a warm expression. His grandmother surely had only been that harsh towards Clear because she was concerned for his wellbeing. She probably wanted Aoba to think about what he really wanted to do now that he had gained back his freedom of choice and most of his mobility. It was his decision if he wanted to be with Clear from here onwards, but looking back to Clear Aoba felt happy to have 'his Clear' back by his side.


	9. Chapter 9

Clear still had trouble to get rid of the tears streaming down his face and with how much he had cried in the last few days, it seemed like a miracle that he hadn't begun to rust anywhere yet. He was torn between the happiness of Aoba allowing him to stay by his side and the heavy burden of guilt for what he had done to his beloved person in the past. Aoba silently tugged at the hand that was still entwined to his by their fingers and Clear looked down to meet his eyes.

"Sit next to me, Clear, come on."

Clear followed Aoba's proposal and seated himself on the edge of his bed, being close enough to him now that Aoba could touch his face and try to wipe away his tears, albeit a bid haphazardly due to his hands not listening entirely to what he wanted them to do. Aoba put on a crooked, embarrassed smile and managed to dry Clear's face for the most part at least.  
"There, looking better already.", he gave him a short kiss on the lips that startled Clear and made him bashfully stutter his name and then Aoba added with a grin: "Don't be so down, Clear. I like a smile on your face the most."

Clear paused for a moment but then tried for a smile, although it looked a little hopeless. Aoba returned his smile and then put their foreheads together and closed his eyes, exhaling to relax himself and passing the calm on to Clear eventually as well. They stayed like this for a while and just when Aoba was about to lift his arms in an attempt to embrace Clear and deepen their moment of togetherness, the other jolted upwards suddenly.

"Wah! I totally forgot that I originally wanted to wash Aoba-san's body!"

"Eh?", Aoba was irritated upon the sudden change of topic and Clear's behavior, so he kept looking after him stunned while Clear hastened to the door.

Discovering the forgotten bowl and washcloth lying on the carpet next to a wet spot, chagrin spread all over Clear's face.  
"Uwah, there's a stain on the carpet, too!", Clear whined while looking at the mess, "I'm sorry, Aoba-san, I'll mop that up immediately and then you can freshen up, Aoba-san."

"Hmm..."  
Aoba didn't feel 'dirty' to be honest, but now that he thought about it, maybe he was a little sweaty. But whilst he certainly enjoyed to be able to watch Clear's antics that simply belonged to a part of his character, he felt left alone right when he wanted to get closer to Clear yet again. Telling himself that it probably was alright for Clear to act this way because he was somebody always careful not to make trouble for others, he smiled at him while the other fidgeted by the door and collected the bowl and washcloth from the floor.  
"So you wanted to wash me, Clear? How about we take a bath together instead?"  
Taking a bath or showering alone was impossible for Aoba right now and putting all of the trouble on Clear to support him felt kind of wrong, but on second thought...

Clear's head shot up from trying to get the worst wetness out of the carpet by the help of some tissues from the tissue box next to Aoba's bed and even from the distance Aoba could see that he had turned red up to his ears while he gave his stuttered answer to his suggestion.  
"N-n-no, Aoba-san. I don't think that's a good idea right now... with how weak you still feel now and such... You might slip or something."

Aoba chuckled and decided to tease him some more.  
"Mh, but won't you be there to hold me, Clear? You could sit right behind me and wash me with my back to your chest..."

Clear got up in a heartbeat without looking at Aoba.  
"I'm really sorry Aoba-san, I'll be right back!"  
That said, he fled the door with the scattered items in hand.

Aoba chuckled. Clear was so easily to embarrass when he was his usual self, that Aoba simply had to poke fun at him now and then.  
Still... Clear's nearly trademark-like lightheartedness he had shown Aoba during their time up to Glitter was simply gone, even if his character had returned for the most part. Though Aoba had not really expected to meet the old, airheaded Clear he had known prior to the incidents of Oval Tower and to be completely honest, even in the past there was a sadness akin to a veil hanging over Clear's personality, too, like his clownish behavior was only another mask he had put on. But not even the Clear he had come to know afterwards was acting that awkward around him, at least when it concerned getting close to Aoba.

There was this feeling of being unwanted that grew ever stronger inside of Aoba's heart. It occurred to him that they might have been closer when he had been unable to see, touch or speak to him, when Clear was openly showing his affection for Aoba - even though the way he had done it had sadly been questionable.  
The Clear now - even though he behaved more like the person Aoba had fallen in love with in the first place - he just acted distantly towards him in a way that made his heart ache.

A few minutes later Clear was back with a freshly filled bowl of water, a washcloth and a towel. This time he would succeed in cleaning Aoba's body for sure he thought, but then it hit him that he hadn't even asked if Aoba wanted him to do that. It was a dilemma and he hung his head a little as he knocked and then entered Aoba's room again.  
"Aoba-san, I'm back, so you can get cleaned up, but... I was so set on accomplishing my task that I forgot to ask if you even want me to do this for you..."  
He sounded like a little child that was just told he couldn't get that candy right in front of his eyes, which made Aoba laugh softly.

"Of course you can do that for me, Clear, I appreciate it."  
It showed that he cared for him after all.

With newly found courage, Clear smiled and headed over to Aoba's bed, sat down on the edge and placed the bowl of water on top of his thighs before he started to unbutton Aoba's light blue pajama top while the other watched him silently.  
Clear dipped the washcloth into the bowl of water, wrung it and carefully began to wipe Aoba's body with it. He started with lightly cleaning Aoba's face, then went down his neck and chest and after that took hold of each of Aoba's arms carefully while brushing over his skin with the damp cloth. Clear did it gently and therefore slowly, making the whole affair appear to Aoba as something almost sensual while he lightly leaned on to Clear and looked him in the eye, occasionally meeting his reddish gaze.  
He didn't touch him directly as he cleaned his skin, but Aoba felt a certain tickle growing stronger within himself as he felt the wet sensation all over his body with the slightly rough fabric touching his skin. His nipples even began to poke out, which embarrassed Aoba, but he tried to tell himself it was only because of the goosebumps that had started to grow all over his body, which had to be because his skin was bared and moist and nothing else...

Clear noticed Aoba's reaction and looked at him.  
"Are you cold, Aoba-san? I'm sorry, I'll hurry it up then. I'm almost done anyways.", Clear announced and grabbed for the towel to dry Aoba's upper body with it.

Aoba wanted it to last a little bit longer, though. And... maybe it would lead to something else he was craving, too.  
"What about down there?"

"Eh?", Clear was confused and Aoba elaborated.

"Won't you clean me below there as well, Clear?"

Aoba unconsciously had put on a very nice set of bedroom eyes together with a very attractive voice, which made Clear blush as soon as he had made eye contact with him upon his inquiry again.  
"A-Aoba-san?", he became seriously flustered when his mind slowly caught on where this might lead to.

"You wouldn't?"  
Aoba was a little surprised about his own voice that had a slightly disappointed, yet very alluring ring to it and it bewildered Clear even more.

"O-o-of course I would, Aoba-san. If you want me to...?"

"Yeah."

Aoba's amber eyes glistened below slightly lowered lashes and Clear swallowed hard at the view. Then he put the bowl of water away from his knees to turn his body a bit, so he could fold away the blanket covering Aoba's lower body before attempting to pull down his pajama pants with slightly shivering hands to reveal the naked skin underneath it.  
Slapping himself inwardly to get rid of upcoming dirty thoughts due to deeming it inappropriate, Clear proceeded to clean Aoba with the wet washcloth in hand, starting with his hips, then went down his thighs, lower legs and feet and then returned upwards. He purposefully left out a certain area, though, which Aoba instantly pointed out to him.

"Clear... you forgot a spot..."

"B-b-but Aoba-san...!"

"Don't do it half-hearted, Clear..."

"Gnn...!", Clear pressed his lips into a thin line, while his cheeks started to burn red, and grabbed the washcloth too hard, squeezing too much water out of it that ran down Aoba's upper legs, which prompted Clear to fidget and to wipe it away hastily. Then he exhaled in a defeated way and brought the washcloth to Aoba's crotch, sliding it up between the inside of his thighs slowly at first and drawing a shivering gasp from him when he rubbed the washcloth between his legs. Aoba had even begun to get a little hard while his gaze was fixed on Clear as he watched him touching his body with a yearning look on his face.

"Aoba-san...", Clear started with a strained voice and then swallowed hard before starting to whine a little in frustration, "Aoba-san, please, why are you doing this to me? Are you trying to provoke me?"

"Mh?", Aoba appeared like he was awakening from some kind of trance, but he got sober way too suddenly as he felt insulted and embarrassed at the same time and furrowed his brows as a wave of red tinged his cheeks.  
"What do you mean by 'why am I doing this to you'? You are the one that won't look at me for longer than a minute or speak to me properly! So I'm down to using this method to get your attention. So, yeah I AM trying to provoke you, damn it!"  
Aoba's accusing tone hurt Clear and his formerly flushed face got paler by the minute as Aoba ranted on.  
"What's wrong with you, Clear? Am... I... putting you off?"

"Eh? ...'Put... me off'?", Aoba's choice of words puzzled Clear, as did the hurt look in his eyes. He had thought the discussion would head into a direction that was casting the blame on him, but Aoba seemed like he saw something wrong with himself instead, literally falling apart as he got into more detail what he was going on about.

"This body... it wasn't originally mine."  
He looked at himself as he sat there in bed; completely bared and still helpless, even though this body was intact. He was so very unsure that even despite the fact that his appearance seemed to be the same, it was still a foreign body - Sei's body, not his own - that his soul inhabited by now and that maybe Clear felt deterred to touch him because of it.  
"What is it, Clear? Why are you acting so distantly? You said this body looks like me, but... is there a reason you can't touch me or look me in the eye for more than a second without squirming anymore? Are you... disgusted with me now?"  
Aoba couldn't hold back tears from slowly building up in his eyes due to all of his worries spilling out of him at once, and then the salty drops just rolled down his face.

"No, that's not true, Aoba-san! It's just that...! That...", Clear needed a moment to sort his thoughts on the matter while Aoba avoided his gaze and wiped at his eyes in a fruitless attempt to stop his own tears, maybe even angry at himself that it had overcome him like this, and sniffed silently.  
After a short pause Clear finally sighed and offered Aoba an explanation.  
"Aoba-san, you misunderstood. It's... true that I have tried to hold myself back from getting close to you, but it's not because of you, but because of me."

"Eh?", Aoba looked at him in confusion and Clear went on with a sad look on his face.

"I love Aoba-san the most, that's the one thing I'm a hundred percent sure of. Yet, I... I went so far as to... mutilate your body for my own self-satisfaction. I cut parts off of you - your beautiful legs, your warm hands, your enchanting eyes..."  
Clear's eyes had hung on Aoba's body and wandered upwards with every body part he had counted until he arrived at Aoba's face.  
"I deemed all of those 'unnecessary' since I wanted to make sure you'd be near me, stay with me, need nothing else besides me... But... doing something like this to the person I love is just wrong. How can I claim that I love you if I did all those things that hurt you, Aoba-san? I selfishly took away something that belongs to your body to make you less human, to make you more... like me. But... that's impossible. I'll always be a machine and you'll always be a human being, there is no helping it. I know that. I'm pretty sure I knew that even then. But still... Still, I did it thinking it was the right thing to do. How could I..."

He broke down shivering and slapped a hand in front of his face and Aoba knew he spilled tears of regret and frustration about himself. Oddly enough, Aoba's own tears had nearly stopped upon seeing Clear crying. He just wanted for him not to be sad, but the other wasn't done yet.

"I know there is no way for Aoba-san to ever forgive me for what I have done. And please don't give me leeway in telling me it was all because of my mind being tempered with by Toue's researchers. It was ultimately my own decision to do what I did and my understanding of a human emotion like 'love' that led me to my actions."  
A sad, self-ironic smile started to tug at Clear's lips while his eyes didn't focus on anything in particular as he poured more self-hatred over himself.  
"Maybe I should never have tried to imitate a human emotion like 'love' in the first place. It's just not suitable for a machine like me."

As pitiful as the display was that Clear showed to him, Aoba felt a sudden streak of anger bubble up inside of himself as he heard those last few words out of Clear's mouth and before he knew it, he had slapped him on the cheek, surprising Clear greatly as his eyes opened wide and he stared back at Aoba.

"Never say something like this ever again, you hear me?", Aoba growled and bit back a new urge to cry as he continued, "Don't tell me your love for me isn't a real feeling or I truly won't forgive you!"  
He balled his shivering fists as hard as his numb hands allowed it for him and chewed at his lower lip strongly enough to nearly draw blood from it, before he breathed in sharply through his nose and continued.  
"And stop acting like it's just you loving me, Clear! I'm loving you, too, after all. And I'm not blind to what has happened to me in the past either. It's not like I can just simply forget it, not to mention that Sei's body is constantly reminding me that it isn't truly mine yet..."

He winced as some memories of the gruesome past he had gone through flashed in front of is inner eye and his body shivered at the fact that even after being presented with something akin to a miracle by Sei he still had to fight to achieve something like a normal everyday life again. And now Clear doubted even his own feelings for Aoba, which were the sole constant in this chaotic thing his life had become. Trying to find the right words, Aoba struggled on in his conversation.

"And then please stop referring to yourself as 'just a machine', Clear. You are way more human than you think you might be. Even though your humanity was lost at some point during our time at Oval Tower, the motivation behind your actions - not wanting to be separated, wanting to be with each other forever, wanting to protect and even wanting to possess me - those are all human emotions, too. So your aren't less human now than you've been to begin with. It's all just a matter of how far you can go, but now that you're back in your right mind, I have no doubts that you'll make the right decisions in the future."

While Aoba's words were meant to be pacifying, Clear still couldn't settle down on the subject and the words gushed out of his mouth like a water out of a waterfall.  
"But how can I be sure that my feelings for Aoba-san are real anymore?", Clear cried and had a hard time looking Aoba in the eye while his face was flooded with tears.  
"I was a defective thing to begin with and was thrown away. Then grandfather adopted me, but he tampered with my emotional settings before anything else. But I felt 'human' while I stayed by his side and I learned all kinds of things from him during that time. Then I met Aoba-san and you answered my questions about life and death in a way I wanted to believe in as well. But even as I tried to choose the right path to take I failed horribly and my mistake led to people messing with my head again and for me to hurt Aoba-san as a result."  
Clear grabbed at his hair, shaking his head and stared at an unfixed point in the room while he panicked.  
"I simply cannot tell which emotions are true anymore! Was I in my right mind before or after I met Toue? Am I really right in the head now as you say? Will something like what I did in Oval Tower happen again? Will I hurt Aoba-san again if I stay together with you? I don't want this anymore! It's too much for me!"

He broke down crying next to Aoba's bed and balled his body together, hugging himself while slowly rocking back and forth on his heels, weeping bitterly.

"Clear..."  
This was just too pitiful for Aoba to watch. So Clear wasn't only unsure about his feelings being real, but was afraid to repeat the mistakes from the past as a result of it, too. But in essence that showed how much he loved Aoba after all, or not? Clear was so much more worried of hurting him then he was worried about himself that it made Aoba happy in a sense, even though he felt bad about being happy because of a thing that made Clear suffer. It was a weird kind of reassurance.

Then Aoba carefully scooted over to the edge of the bed and reached out for Clear to pat his head, slowly threading his hand through his silvery-white hair.  
"Clear", Aoba began in a soothing tone while he kept stroking Clear's hair, "if you weren't sane right now you wouldn't even consider those things. You wouldn't be afraid of what you might do, you'd just do it - at least that's what I believe. But you won't do anything bad to me anymore, because you care for me more than for yourself, right? You just said it: All of your worries circle around me not being harmed by you. But why would you harm me in the first place now?"  
Clear had stopped to shiver under Aoba's caress and looked up to him shyly from below. Aoba took a short break before he asked the question he didn't get an answer he was completely content with before.  
"You... aren't repulsed by this new body of mine, right?"

Clear looked at him like he didn't understand the question and shook his head in disbelief that Aoba still thought like that.  
"No, of course not. Aoba-san is Aoba-san, whatever body you might possess. And I already mentioned this but you look like yourself perfectly. And to me Aoba-san is the most beautiful person in the world."

How Clear managed not to blush at those sappy words, Aoba could not understand. He himself grew red up to his ears as he heard that and his heart skipped a beat after having his initial worry blown away as a non-existent matter.  
"G-good, then... if you're fine with my body then you won't harm me, problem solved.", he stuttered with a shivering voice and his choice of words sounded kind of unbecoming for the graveness of the subject this represented for the two of them.

Clear's eyes widened again. Aside from the fact that Aoba still showed signs of being afraid of what he might do to him despite all of the trusting words he had just offered to him, the motivation behind Clear's actions in Oval Tower hadn't been to disfigure Aoba because of his looks either. He looked away from his beloved and his voice was dispirited as he felt the need to explain his motivations again.  
"You got that wrong, Aoba-san. I thought you were beautiful then as well. I did those awful things to you because I wanted you to become less human so we would match better as two entities holding life without 'truly living' at the same time. It's beyond my capability to understand my own thought process completely now that I've regained my former morals but that doesn't change the facts, Aoba-san. I hurt you willingly even though I loved you, so I don't deserve to be happy by Aoba-san's side ever again after what I've done. And I... I can never be forgiven, either." 

Aoba blinked since to the rollercoaster of emotions the two of them had entered in their conversation was still not over yet.  
He needed a moment to sort all of this information in his head.  
So it wasn't that his body was the actual problem but the fact that they were not the same thing that had bugged Clear and which had led him to his actions? But all of that still amounted to Clear just desperately trying to keep being with Aoba, even though his methods to achieve that goal had been horribly wrong. Stripping down Clear's feelings to that fact of wanting to be with the person he loved, Aoba was as unable to hate him for what the had done to him in the past as ever. Even during his time in Oval Tower while slowly getting crippled and driven half-mad by the one person that meant the most to him, he didn't have it in himself to produce a feeling like hate against Clear. Aoba had just been as desperate to appeal to him as Clear had in shaping him to the form he had desired.

And forgiveness... Forgiveness was something Clear had mentioned before already, so it must be something very important to him. But you could only forgive somebody if you thought they did you wrong. Aoba wondered if that really was the case with how willingly he had accepted Clear's actions then.

Was there even a need for him to forgive Clear from his perspective?  
Was he mad at Clear for what he had done, even though he had permitted it?  
Permitted... more like feeling he had no other choice in his desperation back then.  
Aoba had wanted to pay Clear back for what he had done to protect him - harming himself to the brink of function failure just so he could stand up against his brothers and Toue for him. Clear had already shown him how much he cared for him then. And after the experiments on him had lasted long enough to break his will to live already, Clear was the only thing left in his life he still cared for. Clear's happiness had meant everything to him and if achieving that meant to lose parts of his body, so be it. That had been Aoba's mindset back then, or at least something akin to this.

Forgiveness...  
Aoba pondered whether that was really something he needed, not so much for Clear, but for himself as well.  
Being torn apart like a doll had been hard on him physically and psychically. Apart from the pain and the insanity afflicting Aoba due to Clear not being satisfied with him anymore, wanting to 'perfect' him more and more despite the harm that he caused his lover by doing so, the most lingering feeling inside of Aoba had been fear. Fear of what would come next, fear of what would Clear do to him and fear of what he wouldn't do as well - maybe he wouldn't be willing to stay by his side anymore even though he had done all he had wanted to do to him.  
If it was about that terrible feeling Clear sought forgiveness for, Aoba wasn't sure if he truly could do it even if he wanted to, since it was something carved too deeply into his soul.

After overthinking stuff to the point of making himself feel terrible, Aoba remembered that Clear had already dismissed any kind of attempt on pardoning him, which rubbed Aoba the wrong way and made him finally look up to him again.

"Doesn't the decision if I can forgive you or not lie with me, Clear?", Aoba finally asked and Clear turned his head in search for his eyes. Aoba cupped Clear's face with both hands and went on.  
"There will always be good and bad times when it comes to relationships between two individuals, Clear. But the choice of forgiving each other for what happened between us lies within ourselves."  
He furrowed his brows and his voice quivered a little.  
"I love you and you said you love me, too. I can believe in that, right?"

"Of course you can believe in that, Aoba-san, it's just that...!", Clear grabbed one of Aoba's hands and nuzzled it insecurely.  
"I... I just feel like I don't have the right to love you anymore, Aoba-san, even though the heart I hope to posses still yearns for you so, so much."  
He kissed Aoba's palm and then carefully turned his lover's hand around to plant soft kisses on his knuckles and the back of his hand afterwards.  
"I don't think I have the right to even still exist either, but I didn't destroy myself because you told me not to and I promised Sei-san to take care of you to make up for what I have done to you somehow as well - if that's even possible..."  
His eyes looked away from Aoba for a moment before he closed them with a bitter expression on his face and then lowered his head a bit.  
"It was my fault that you ended up the way you did, so the least I can do is to try to amend for my sins by aiding you in getting back what you have lost because of me. But... I think I shouldn't attempt to be your lover again."

"Stop talking nonsense!", Aoba shouted suddenly, startling Clear, and drew his hand away. Then he pushed himself off the bed, fell on top of Clear as both of them tumbled to the floor due to the momentum, and kissed him heatedly before Clear could even blink or grasp the situation.  
"There's no such thing as 'attempting to be lovers'! You either love me or you don't! I'm fed up with running in circles by throwing words at each other! So cut it out and just show me how much you love me by touching me, Clear!"  
Aoba resumed to dominate Clear's mouth and wildly entwined their tongues while he grabbed for Clear's hand to place it on his chest and moved it over his body in an attempt to make him touch him. Leaving Clear breathless from their kiss, he drew away from him slightly to look him in the eye insistently.  
"I have missed you being yourself so much during that time in Oval Tower and now that you're back I miss you touching me so much. I want to feel your skin on mine, our lips meeting, our bodies melting together... I want you, Clear. Take this insecurity away from me and let me feel your warmth!"

He embraced him and started to kiss and lick his lips again, making Clear gasp as he still tried to resist Aoba's advances on him.  
"No, Aoba-san, don't do this."

But Aoba only let out a growl through gritted teeth and tried to rid Clear off his clothes, his shivering, still half-benumbed fingers having trouble with the buttons of Clear's shirt.

"Aoba-san.", Clear tried to stop Aoba's hands by covering them with his, making Aoba grumble and look at him with a hint of desperation glinting in his amber eyes that made Clear weak to keep up his protest. Brushing some messy strands of hair out of Aoba's face tenderly, he cupped his beloved's back of the head and pleaded with him again instead.  
"I can't do this, Aoba-san. Everything inside of me shouts 'wrong'; I don't deserve this. It would make me happy to make love to you, I can't be happy...!"

"But I want to make you happy, Clear!"  
Aoba wanted to forget all of the heavy things that stood between them at least for a moment and leaned forwards to bury his head in Clear's nape of the neck. He breathed out a frustrated sigh.  
"I love you so much, please let me do this for you. Let's feel good together, leave all of those sad feelings behind and only look forwards...!"  
Aoba just had the strong feeling that becoming one with Clear would make everything better, just like in the moment when Clear had hugged him before and had dissolved all of his worries with just this one gesture.

"Gnh...!"  
Clear swallowed hard and closed his eyes as he felt Aoba nuzzle his neck and heard him let out a faint whimpering sound.  
Clear finally hugged him back and buried his nose in his blue hair, inhaling his scent.  
"Aoba-san! Aoba-san! Aoba-san...! I want to... touch you, too...!"

Aoba exhaled with relief and tried to urge him on more by talking close to Clear's ear.  
"Then go on already. Make these arms and legs, that never had the chance to be touched by you yet, familiar with your body."

Clear complied by rolling the two of them over, so that Aoba's back faced the carpet now, and then kissed his lips lovingly before making his way down Aoba's naked body. He started with his neck, then went down his chest and sucked lightly on his nipples while his hands moved down Aoba's arms from his shoulders to his hands. Aoba shivered and Clear gasped and looked at him if he was alright. Aoba had his eyes closed and didn't appear to be negatively affected by his touch - quite the contrary - but it still had sent a sudden sting to Clear's heart as he had misinterpreted his arousal for fear.  
Shaking his head to simultaneously shake off that feeling, Clear supported himself on his hands and crawled a bit deeper, now nibbling at Aoba's hips and then kissing his way down his thighs, knees, shins and finally arriving by his feet until he even kissed Aoba's toes. But Aoba stirred once more and instead of thinking it might be due to excitement, Clear instantly thought he was afraid of him yet again and suddenly felt like he couldn't go on anymore, since his heart was struck by the worry of scaring Aoba. A heavy feeling of guilt had conquered him as he had touched the parts of Aoba he had taken from him once as well.  
Maybe he was simply unable to switch over from letting all of his anxieties out to embracing Aoba confidently on a moment's notice.

With nothing happening to him and Clear's light touches on his extremities reaching him only distantly or not at all in his current state, Aoba opened his eyes and looked at Clear, who had sat back on his heels with a heartbroken look on his face and stared at the floor.

"Clear?"

Clear's hands trembled as he balled them into fists and looked like he had done something terrible.  
"I'm sorry, Aoba-san... it seems like I... can't go any further. I just can't."  
His chin quivered and Aoba wondered what was wrong.

"Not... in the mood yet?", he asked him weakly and tried to get up from the floor by supporting himself on his elbows, but didn't have enough strength to lift himself up any further.

Clear noticed this and helped him sit up again, whereupon Aoba hugged his neck and kissed Clear's jaw. Clear let him place kisses all over his face and lastly caught Aoba's lips with his own, trying to sink back into that heated moment again that had captured him just a few minutes ago, but it was useless, the spark simply wouldn't ignite anymore.  
He let out a frustrated sigh and shook his head dismissively.  
"I'm really sorry, Aoba-san, I just... can't, even though I want to..."  
Looking at Aoba's face, he seemed irritated and Clear wanted to comfort him somehow but didn't know exactly how he should do it.  
"I might be able to produce an erection by simply willing it, so that I can please you, but--"

"No, it's alright, Clear.", Aoba interrupted him, since the thought of Clear degrading himself to a mere sex tool just for his sake was absolutely horrible to him. He would rather come to terms with not getting what he wanted after all instead, but he struggled with getting rid of the built-up tension that still held him in its grasp just fine.  
"I don't mind... It's no good if you can't enjoy it anyway..."

Aoba looked away from Clear and wondered if the other would at least be willing to cuddle for a while, while Clear in turn stole a view on Aoba's lower regions and spotted his half-hard dick poking out between his legs. Feeling sorry for not being able to satisfy Aoba's needs, an idea struck Clear and he tried to lift the mood as he whispered close to Aoba's ear.  
"You got like that... just from me kissing and touching you a little, Aoba-san?"  
His fingertips lightly touched the tip of Aoba's erection, making Aoba cringe and looking at Clear flustered and a little angry as well.

"Tche! Be quiet, it's been a while, okay? I'm just pent up a bit, but I'm trying to calm down already, so give it a rest...!"  
He tried to shove Clear's hand away from his dick, but the other grabbed his aroused body part instead for real and started to rub his hand up and down on it.  
"Ah! Clear! What are you doing? You said you didn't want to...!"

"It's not that I don't want to, Aoba-san, but that I feel like I simply can't go all the way with you.", Clear corrected him and moved his hand slowly while his grip hardened a little.  
"But that doesn't mean you have to suffer because of it. If we do it like this you can enjoy it at least a little, am I correct?"

Aoba squirmed and let out a high-pitched moan as Clear steadily found to a pace and strength of his grip around his erection that pleased Aoba the most.  
"Ah! Uh...! Clear...!"  
He shut his eyes, grabbed Clear's shirt with both hands and whimpered as he enjoyed Clear's touches.

Clear's lightly pink eyes watched him calmly as Aoba's body writhed with newly kindled arousal spreading from his loins all over his body. Aoba's cheeks blushed darkly and his breathing grew restless, making his voice spill out occasionally, which Aoba tried to suppress due to embarrassment and the fact that he had just remembered Tae to be at home at the moment as well.  
Looking back at Clear with heavy-lidded eyes, Aoba saw that at least Clear's cheeks had become a little bit rosy while he studied his reactions, but the fact that he watched him the whole time made him self-conscious all the more and he squinted his eyes shut again to try to concentrate on the feelings Clear roused within him instead.  
But damn, Clear's hand truly felt good on him and Aoba didn't like the idea that only he himself would get something out of the situation. Still... if Clear simply couldn't get into the mood then...

"Eh?"  
Aoba was in a position where his lower body was partially placed on Clear's lap and he noticed that something hard started to poke against his thigh from below, making him open his eyes again.  
"Clear...?"

Clear blinked like he was waking up from a trance upon being called by his name and made eye contact with Aoba, who gave him a somewhat sly smile as he looked up to him now.  
"Not being aroused, huh? I say you got aroused just fine."  
He grinded his hips against the bulge in Clear's pants suggestively, earning himself a surprised gasp from his lover.

"Aoba-san...! But a few moments ago I really just couldn't... It only started after you got into the mood and I could see your face the whole time..."

"Maybe I just wanted too much too soon then.", Aoba chuckled, "But it's fine like this, I don't mind.", he explained and moved away slightly to give Clear's cock some room before he tried to unzip Clear's pants with with his numb hands, swearing under his breath at himself as he had trouble with the button and the zipper and the whole process of freeing Clear's erection from his pants and underwear.

Clear gasped at Aoba's assertiveness.  
"I-i-It's fine, Aoba-san, you don't have to...!"

But Aoba glared at him and Clear understood that it was important for him to please him as well. Clear gently brought his hands to Aoba's to help him with his clothes and Aoba allowed it - if a little begrudgingly at not being able to do it himself. As soon as Clear's dick was standing free in all its glory, Aoba reached for it and closed his fingers around his shaft, but had to pause to adjust his grip. He had trouble figuring out if he had already gripped him too hard or whether he even was touching the other's erection at all due the persistent numbness he inwardly cursed at for the umpteenth time by now.

Clear could read Aoba's mood from his face literally and attempted do help him by placing his own, free hand on top of Aoba's, cupping it while adjusting their grip so it felt just right for him and then he moved his hand together with Aoba's. It was feeling differently from touching himself, even though Clear hadn't felt the need to do that even once so far, but he could somewhat imagine how his own hands might feel on his sex. But with Aoba's fingers pressing down on his skin instead he enjoyed his touch a lot, even if he helped him out a little.

Aoba in turn gained some satisfaction from pleasuring Clear, even if he wasn't able to do it all by himself. The sheer knowledge of being able to give him something back in return while Clear tried his best to make him feel good made him happy. But thinking got harder by the minute as the hand Clear massaged his cock with made him feel light-headed while the tingling sensation grew more and more intense and an undeniable pressure grew stronger within his body.

"Clear...", he breathed and searched for Clear's lips again, but had trouble meeting them right, making their kiss messy and only half as intense as Aoba wanted it to be. Still... the way Clear's fingers stroke over his erection right now with the force and pace he used being just right, Aoba couldn't bring himself to care much about his failing kisses. Remembering that he wanted Clear to feel good, too, he tried to strengthen his grip around Clear's member, but felt himself powerless as he sank into his own emotions.

Watching Aoba enjoy himself gave Clear a fluttering, tingling feeling from the inside. He could be sure that Aoba was feeling good while he saw the impassioned look on his face and heard his low moans right next to his ear as he writhed under his touch. Aoba had begun to move his hips a little and Clear suddenly thought that he wanted to be inside of him very much. But Aoba was still so weak in his arms, he surely would overtax him if he were to enter him now and probably loose himself over the sole fact that Aoba wanted him so desperately.  
Clear had to swallow hard to keep his own fantasies in check. For now this was all he could get, it was already more than he had imagined to ever receive from Aoba ever again. Aoba had said that he loved him, allowed him to touch his body, lay there gasping and moaning in his arms with half-opened eyes...  
Clear bent down and kissed him hungrily, making Aoba let out a surprised sound through his nose before he sunk into the feeling of their lips touching and their tongues caressing each other until he had to let go to gasp for breath.

"C-Clear...! No more... I'm close...!"  
Aoba struggled with the words as he felt himself getting closer and closer to reach his climax, his attempts to stifle his moans nearly useless now.

Clear was in the same state and even though Aoba's fingers lost in strength due to shivering from the oncoming excitement, it aroused him all the more to have coaxed all of those feelings out of him. He grabbed at Aoba's erection a bit harder, massaging the tip with his thumb and earned himself an ecstatic whimper.

"Ah...! Mmh...! Fu...! I'm co--mh...!"

The waves of the climax rolled over Aoba and he unloaded all of his semen in a thick spurt, hitting Clear's shirt and even his chin, while Clear just studied the sight with an enraptured look on his face. He almost didn't recognize that he was coming himself, but then a sudden feeling of release and joy overwhelmed him and he closed his eyes to capture the moment.

Breathing heavily as he tried to get air back into his lungs, Aoba stole a look on Clear's face and saw a glimpse of him coming down from his orgasm, but was immediately horrified to see his own semen dropping from Clear's chin.

"Whoa, sorry, I got you dirty, Clear.", he said and wanted to wipe it away, but felt his hand being soaked with Clear's come dribbling down his fingers as he lifted it up.  
Getting flustered at what he nearly had done, he stuttered unintelligible gibberish before Clear let out a chuckle and raised his own hand drenched in Aoba's semen before lasciviously licking over it.

"I guess that makes two of us then, Aoba-san."

Aoba gasped at the sight and Clear licked his lips before giving him a kiss on his forehead.  
"But yeah, you can't go back to bed like this. I guess I'll have to clean you all over again."

A few minutes later Aoba was lying in bed again, all cleaned up and tucked in like a little kid - he sulked at the feeling and the image he probably gave off.  
"Cle-ar...! What's that supposed to mean?"

Clear smiled down at him like a love-drunk idiot not getting the point as he stood next to the bed bent down a bit with his hands put on the mattress for support.  
"What do you mean, Aoba-san? Don't you enjoy the feeling of the nice, dry blankets around you?"

"I say I enjoy seeing you smile, but that doesn't mean I want to be tucked into bed like a caterpillar into a cocoon.", Aoba grumbled and pulled a wry face.  
"Besides, why are you standing there? Are you my mom or what? Get the hell in here with me!"  
Not giving Clear a chance to react, Aoba wriggled his arm out from under the bedsheets and grabbed at Clear's collar suddenly, tugging at it with all the strength he could muster until a very surprised Clear began to loose his balance and crashed on top of Aoba.

"Ugh...! Ouch... Clear... you're heavy...!", Aoba protested under Clear's weight and Clear, whose eyes looked like they spun around themselves, moved over towards the wall the bed was standing against in irritation.

He whined "But Aoba-san tugged at my shirt...!" but then he looked a still pouting and somewhat embarrassed Aoba in the eye and his protest melted into a smile.  
"I understand, Aoba-san, I'll do as you say."

Complying with Aoba's wishes he got under the covers and Aoba turned over to rest his head on his chest, then he grumbled at the shirt and tugged at it again to make Clear unbutton it, revealing his chest. Aoba snuggled up to him and finally gave off a content sigh as he felt Clear's warmth against his cheek.

"Way better...", he murmured before falling asleep soon afterwards.

Clear smiled at him and embraced him with one arm, holding him close.  
He thought that right now he was really happy after a long time of not even knowing what happiness had felt like anymore.


End file.
